A CFD Simulation Method for Vehicle Seat Heating and Ventilation Considering the Multilayer Seat Structure

Automotive thermal-comfort studies commonly focus on interactions between occupants and cabin air, although the seat forms the principal sustained contact interface between an occupant and a vehicle. This study presents a coupled computational fluid dynamics (CFD) framework that simultaneously resolves heat conduction through perforated leather, breathable sponge, heating pads, and foam; porous airflow through the seat; seat heating and ventilation; and convective heat transfer between the occupant and cabin air. Four total seat-heating powers (0, 60, 90, and 120 W) and four ventilation-fan speeds (0, 1500, 3000, and 4500 rpm) were simulated for 900 s. The results show that seat heating primarily alters temperatures in the contact region through conduction, whereas seat ventilation increases local airflow and cooling near the edges of ventilated contact regions. The principal contribution is a reproducible interface between cabin CFD and thermophysiological modeling. The framework generates spatially resolved fields of air temperature, air velocity, skin and contact-surface temperatures, and heat flux that can serve as boundary conditions for physiological models such as the Fiala and Berkeley models and for subsequent experimental validation. Because the present calculations constitute a comparative single-driver study, direct experimental validation, active thermoregulation, subjective thermal sensation, and interactions under full occupancy must be addressed before the framework can provide absolute comfort predictions.