Design of a kite seat with optimal ergonomic fit, for use in surfschools

Abstract

The goal of this thesis is to design a kite seat with optimal ergonomic fit for beginners in kite schools. Before designing, it is important to understand the context and create anthropometric guidelines for the target group.

The seat will be used for sit-kitesurfing, which originates from the sport kitesurfing. Its target group focuses on people with a physical disability such as SCI, amputees or spina bifida. The difference with kitesurfing is that the setup exists of a seat mounted on an aluminium frame. This frame goes onto a specially designed board for this purpose.

The project has been set up in cooperation with the Willem Hooft Foundation. This is an organisation aimed at improving the accessibility of adapted watersports, with a focus on kitesurfing. Research shows that accessibility to sports in general is lower for people with a physical disability. However, this is expected to be even lower for sit-kitesurfing. Currently, the availability of adapted courses is limited and people are left to themselves. This means buying all the gear before even trying the sport and learning the sport without qualified instructors. Improving the accessibility is done in cooperation with kiteschools offering adapted courses, where beginners can try out the sport in a safe environment.

What stops most kiteschools from offering these courses is the relatively high cost of the specialised gear. Currently, the biggest part of the costs consists of the kite seats. At least four out of seven different seat sizes are necessary to organise kite courses. Replacing those four to seven seats by a single, adaptable seat will greatly reduce the cost for kiteschools. Next to the financial aspect, there are practical and ergonomical benefits. An example is the time-consuming and difficult task of changing the right seat size to the frame. Ergonomically, the fit of these seats is often not optimised for the beginning kitesurfer of the target group.

The context, literature and desktop research resulted in key insights and points of improvement. Where information was still lacking, additional user or expert interviews were performed. Anthropometric data has been gathered through existing datasets on DINED. However, this information was not specific for the target group. Additional manual measurements and 3D-scans are performed with 9 people fitting the target group. This pointed out the differences between the target group and the existing datasets, but also provided lacking anthropometric data such as thigh width and location of the trochanter. Next to that the difficulties became clear, as everybody is different. The main design goals gathered from the research are improving pressure distribution through an optimal and tight fit. Challenges are the varying location of the trochanter, shape of the buttocks and the thighs.

The final design is an adjustable seat, reducing the amount of needed kite seats from at least four to one. This will greatly decrease investment costs, effort, time and storage. The project’s outcome includes anthropometric design guidelines for a kite seat and a 1:1 prototype to test the concept.