Months before the first seat was built and installed in the new Ford Flex crossover, a team of engineers working with sophisticated computers had designed and virtually perfected the seat from the comfort of their desks.
A trio of Ford engineers – Qin Pan, Joanna Rakowska and Michael Medoro – used sophisticated computer simulation technology to ensure that drivers and passengers of new-generation vehicles like the upcoming 2009 Ford Flex feel a minimum of vibration and just the right amount of road input.
The three Ford engineers will issue a technical paper this week at the 2008 SAE World Congress in Detroit that details the lengths Ford went to optimize the comfort and quality of the new Ford F-Family seats debuting in the Flex.
“We took real-world road surface data and programmed it into our engineering model,” said Pan, the project leader. “This allowed us to optimize the design of mass dampers in the seats to counter these predicted road inputs earlier in the development than ever before, so that when we get to physical prototype stage, we can concentrate on fine-tuning rather than designing the damping system.”
The breakthroughs mean Ford can apply its learnings across a wide range of products. The new F-Family seat architecture debuts in the Ford Flex but will eventually be featured across a range of vehicles from the Ford Focus to the new Ford F-150.
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