Identification and assessment of vehicle seat adjuster sound quality

In order to improve operating noise performance of a seat adjuster mechanism, benchmarking measurements were conducted in different cars for six and eight types of seat adjustment operation. The six types of operation include: seat moving up, seat moving down, seat front end up, seat front end down, seat rear end up and seat rear end down. The eight types of operation include: seat moving forward, seat moving backward, seat moving up, seat moving down, seat front end up, seat front end down, seat rear end up and seat rear end down. The noise and vibration levels, sound quality and root causes of the noise problem have been analysed and discussed in this paper. The noise characteristics have been identified, and the psychoacoustic parameters have been used to quantify sound quality of the seat adjuster. The objective assessment results have been found to match well with subjective evaluation results.