Chairs and seats – Bottom or back with means to alter contour – Providing support for lower back region
Patent
1996-05-20
1998-06-23
Cuomo, Peter M.
Chairs and seats
Bottom or back with means to alter contour
Providing support for lower back region
2972848, 2972843, 2974523, A47C 3027, A47C 746
Patent
active
057694907
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
This invention relates to lumbar supports for use in the back rest of seats, chairs and the like. The invention is specially suited for use with vehicle seats, and it will be convenient to hereinafter describe the invention with particular reference to that example use. In that regard, the word "vehicle" is to be understood as embracing vehicles of all kinds including aircraft, water borne vehicles and land vehicles.
It is well known to provide adjustable lumbar supports in vehicle seats, and especially in the seat to be occupied by the vehicle driver. Such adjustable supports take a variety of forms, and the manner of achieving adjustment also varies widely. The adjustment is generally such that it varies the effective length of the support and/or its stiffness, and thereby influences the extent to which the support curves rearwards in response to pressure applied by the user of the vehicle seat. That is, the support may provide a relatively flat or deeply curved support for the vehicle seat occupant, according to the level of adjustment of the support.
Adjustment of the foregoing kind is sometimes referred to as fore and aft adjustment, which reflects the direction in which the support moves during adjustment under normal use conditions. PCT patent application AU93/00521 discloses means for achieving an additional form of adjustment which shifts the zone of primary support upwards or downwards as required. The relative terms "upwards" and "downwards" are used in the context of normal use conditions of the lumbar support. The zone of primary support is the zone extending transverse to the seat back rest along which the support structure imposes maximum resistance to rearward deflection by the pressure imposed by the occupant of the associated seat. It is therefore at the region of the seat back rest at which the seat occupant feels a variation in the degree of support as a consequence of fore or aft adjustment of the lumbar support.
The facility to effect up and down adjustment of the foregoing kind greatly enhances the benefits of an adjustable lumbar support. It permits the lumbar support to be adjusted to best suit the particular body form, in particular height, of each person who occupies the seat. Although the lumbar support disclosed by PCT application AU93/00521 satisfactorily meets that general requirement, it has been found that a person using such a lumbar support may experience a lack of consistency in the degree of support provided at the upper and lower regions respectively of the support structure.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a lumbar support which overcomes or minimizes the aforementioned problem. It is a further object of the invention to provide a seat assembly including such a lumbar support. It is yet another object of the invention to provide a lumbar support having an improved construction such as to permit substantial variation in the degree of support provided at the upper and lower regions of the support structure.
The present invention is concerned with a lumbar support of the kind including a flexible band which in use extends longitudinally across the back rest of a seat so that opposite ends of the band are adjacent respective opposite sides of the back rest. The band has upper and lower regions which extend in the longitudinal direction of the band and which are laterally spaced from one another. Each of those regions has an effective length in the longitudinal direction of the band which in use determines the depth of rearward curvature of the respective region.
A lumbar support in accordance with one aspect of the invention is characterised in that each of the upper and lower regions of the flexible band is connected to region adjusting means which is operative to shorten the effective length of a selected one of either of the regions while simultaneously permitting or causing extension of the effective length of the other non-selected region. Such an arrangement provides a positive adjustment facility for each of the two band regions and thereby ensu
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patent: 5553919 (1996-09-01), Dennis
Cuomo Peter M.
Henderson's Industries Pty. Ltd.
White Rodney B.
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