For chest thump, are we talking about about the kind of thumping you get at a club?
It is primarily a SPL dependant effect. Need to reach a certain sound pressure to resonate the chest cavity, or lower down in the abdomen etc.
In clubs, concert venues, the space is much larger and the bass sound waves are much cleaner, not so much room affected peaks and dips, phase changes.
In our home setup, spaces are much smaller. Asymmetrically rooms and sub placements, modal behavior all contribute to to the unpredictability.
This is one of the reason in my mind, to use a bass array as much as possible. A plane wavefront launched from the front wall, down the length of the room.
Imo this gives the cleanest impulse wavefront, and the highest chance of playback per directors intent.
Coming back to the club subwoofers, they usually have their efficiency peaks in the 50-60hz range, which is very close to our chest cavity resonant frequencies.
This is another reason why near field subs are so tactile, similarly ported subs (they move more air) are much more tactile than sealed subs. Near field receives much higher direct sound vs room sound, so there are less dips and phase issues. . And it has to be quite near. ~within driver diameter, to be reliably near field.
With the strong clean impulse wavefront, the sofa, unfortunately, definitely intercepts the bass wave and resonates sympathetically. How the sofa moves, depends on its transparency to sound (leather more tactile than fabric), as well as the sofa structure natural resonant modes AND damping. Think of that human body resonant frequency, chart, but for the sofa. The back, the seat, the armrest, the entire sofa, all have different modes, and different damping. The person sitting on the sofa then also changes the combined system resonant frequency.
Too little mechanical damping in the sofa structure, will result in longer decay, and the impression of tactile smearing in the bass.
For multi sub setup, one way to investigate is to measure the individual subs at MLP, and then note their response peaks and dips. Then listen to known tracks for chest thump, with individual subs only, not combined.
It will be interesting to note, if there are any directionality of the bass impulse, as well as relative magnitude of chest thump for each individual sub -does it corelate with having a good response or dip at the thump frequency range.
Because the content may may be a broad band impulse say 30-60hz whack. If a sub has dip at 40hz, it will sound and feel different compared to a sub with dip at 50, or 30, or 60. And I still feel there is some placement and directionality effect. Meaning 2 subs may measure quite similar at different location, but their tactile thump feel is different.
One example of bass impulse wavefront directionality, is on live by night, after they talk about the tunnels. The first gunshot from the tunnel ambush comes from the front left speaker. I think I can feel that impulse from my front left speaker, currently crossed 60hz.
Another example, ready player one race scene. Right at the end towards finish line, when king kong is rushing ahead to intercept… It felt like there were bass thumps from his foot steps coming from left side, and right side, depending on the camera angle as it rotates. I just noticed this at the most recent demo, have yet to re-check it… This is much lower though, 20-30hz, not exactly chest thump…
Do women feel chest thump the same as men? Might have to do with chest size 
I know that some people have improved output on these stacked bottom firing subs by removing the bass plate and pointing the port at the listener.
is exactly what I’m talking about when I started the thread…
, interesting subwoofer that claims to have superb ultra fast transients , anyone heard of these ?