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The various factors that affect ride comfort, including noise, vibrations and harshness (NVH) have been in focus in many research studies due to an increasing demand in ride comfort in the automotive industry. Vibrations have been highlighted as an important contribution to assess and predict overall ride comfort. The purpose of this paper is to present an approach to explain ride comfort with respect to vibration for the seated occupant based on a systematic literature review of previous fundamental research and to relate these results to the application in the contemporary automotive industry. The results from the literature study show that numerous research studies have determined how vibration frequency, magnitude, direction, duration affect human response to vibration. Also, the studies have highlighted how body posture, age, gender and anthropometry affect the human perception of comfort.

During the past decades the number of spinal injuries has increased. Traffic accidents are the cause of more than 50 per cent of these injuries. Fractures and dislocations of the vertebrae as well as minor spinal injuries can cause both acute and chronic pain or disability. Knowledge of the biomechanical response of the spine under static and dynamic loads would lead to a better understanding of the injury mechanisms and to improved methods of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. This information could also be useful to validate mechanical and mathematical models of the spine. In this overview of the literature, biomechanical experimental methods and results for the lumbar spine under different loading conditions are presented and discussed. Numerous experimental studies on lumbar spine response and stability to static loads, especially in the physiological range of motion, have been reported in the literature, both for flexion, extension, lateral bending, compression and torsion.