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Seats are one of the critical component of school bus for children’s comfort & safety. Seat foam thickness, its shape, cushion width & seat height will play a vital role in comfort. Fatigue is the common cause due to uncomfortable seating and it is due to only one type of seat available in school buses to accommodate different height children. (here different height means; schools have children from class nursery to senior secondary). Fatigue will cause impact on children’s health & overall development. The topic was chosen because of increasing concerns in children’s comfort & safety in school buses. In existing design, standard seat with cushion height from bus floor is 450mm. In this case, it’s only suitable for children height of 4.5 feet to 5.5 feet. Ergonomically, it is very difficult to climb on the seat for range of children height from 3 feet to 4feet.

Buses are always one of the main and favorite sources of public transit. Thousands of people die or injure every year in bus accidents. Bus seat can also cause severe injury to the occupants in case of frontal impact. Seat structure of the bus should absorb sufficient energy to minimize the passenger injury. Most of the occupants seated in the second row or further back were injured by hitting the seat back in the row in front of them. In India, AIS023 (Automotive Industry Standards) is one of the several mandatory standards from CMVR (Central Motor Vehicles Rules) to ensure the seat strength and occupant safety during accidents. This standard specifies minimum and maximum deformations range for the seat back to minimize the passenger injury with adequate seat strength. Present study includes the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and correlation of bus seat as per AIS023 test setup with LS-Dyna explicit tool. Reasonable correlation was found between test and simulation results.