Construction of human body vibration finite element model that simulates riding comfort of persons who ride a wheelchair

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the possibility of comfort improvement of persons who ride wheelchairs carried in welfare vehicles. Firstly, an interview with wheelchair users who daily use welfare vehicles was carried out to investigate the present situation. A boarding experiment to the wheelchair in the real welfare vehicle was also carried out. From not only physical viewpoint but also psychological viewpoint, evaluation methods for quantitatively evaluating vibration characteristic of this wheelchair-human vibration system were examined. Secondly, another wheelchair board experiment by sheet excitation equipment that reproduced vibration environment was carried out. In the experiment, the transmissibility of human body who rode the wheelchair, the evaluation of sense of vibration at each body part and the riding comfort evaluation were evaluated. As a result, it was confirmed that swinging of head, thorax top and bottom greatly influence the riding comfort, though the vibration behavior tendencies of the each every examinee were different each other. In particular, it became clear that head vertical vibration at 4Hz and head at 5Hz and vertical vibration of the bust gave most adverse effect for the riding comfort. In this paper, it has been concluded that the change of the vibration mode as well as the decrease of magnitude of the vibration could improve riding comfort. Based on the knowledge got here, a wheelchair-human vibration system model according to finite element method was constructed to examine the possibility of this riding comfort improvement. The simulation according to the vibration model showed that the change in not only the magnitude of the vibration of the human body but also the vibration mode could be reproduced only by changing the physical properties of seat cushions.