Human responses to vibration and vibration control

该研究方案的主要目标是通过系统的分析和实验研究，调查人类对职业全身和节段性振动暴露的反应，并通过振动控制寻求有效的干预措施。这项研究的动机源于这样一个事实，即职业暴露于节段性和全身机械振动与一系列肌肉骨骼疾病和安全风险有关。例如，手持式电动工具振动引起的手传振动(HTV)职业暴露与手-臂系统的血管、感觉神经和肌肉骨骼结构的各种障碍有关，而道路和非道路作业车辆暴露于WBV与脊柱和支撑结构的障碍、不适、疲劳和工作效率丧失有关。据估计，在美国、加拿大、欧洲和日本，此类疾病每年造成的损失高达数十亿美元，其中包括旷工、生产力损失以及医疗和补偿成本。该研究计划将集中于一些具体研究，以实现其具体目标，这些研究将包括：(I)开发坐在刚性和柔性支撑下并暴露在WBV下的上半身的多体动力学模型；(Ii)开发暴露在HTV下的人类手臂的多维模型；(Iii)探索确定可靠模型参数的方法；(Iv)调查振动能量转移到生物系统内的各种子结构，并探索替代权重及其与现有流行病学数据的关系；(V)表征坐着的人体对沿水平轴的全身振动的生物动力学反应；探索降低座体振动剂量的减振控制机制。预计研究工作将有助于正在进行的全球标准化工作，以建立评估职业性冲击和振动暴露所造成的健康和安全风险的准则和方法。

The primary goal of this research proposal is to investigate human responses to occupational whole-body and segmental vibration exposure through systematic analytical and experimental investigations, and to seek effective interventions through vibration control. The motivations for the research stem from the fact that occupational exposure to segmental and whole-body mechanical vibration has been associated with an array of musculoskeletal disorders and safety risks. For example, the occupational exposure of hand-transmitted vibration (HTV) arising from hand-held power tools vibration has been related to various disorders in vascular, sensorineural and musculoskeletal structures of the hand-arm system, while the exposure to WBV of road and off-road work vehicles has been related to disorders of the spine and supporting structure, discomfort, fatigue and loss of working efficiency. The annual costs of such disorders in US, Canada, Europe and Japan has been estimated in the order of several billions of dollars, including the absenteeism, loss of productivity and health and compensation costs. The research program will focus on a number of specific studies in order to achieve its specific goals, which will include: (i) development of mulitbody dynamic models of the upper body seated with rigid and flexible supports and exposed to WBV; (ii) development of a multi-dimensional model of the human hand-arm exposed to HTV; (iii) explore methods for identifying reliable model parameters; (iv) investigate vibration energy transfer to various substructures within the biological system, and explore alternate weightings and its relations with the available epidemiological data; (v) characterize biodynamic responses of the seated human body to whole-body vibration along the horizontal axes; and (vi) explore vibration control mechanisms to reduce the vibration dosage for the seated body. The research works are expected to contribute to the ongoing global standardization efforts towards building guidelines and methods for assessing the health and safety risks imposed by occupational shock and vibration exposures.