Laboratory evaluation of the complex interplay between whole-body vibration and spinal posture

全身振动（WBV）影响重型移动的机械操作员，并对7%的劳动力构成重大健康风险。振动暴露因工业环境而异，例如采矿和林业环境。工业座椅是一种可以有效减少振动暴露的工程控制措施，但我们观察到，单个座椅最适合在特定振动环境中衰减WBV-它们并不是在所有应用中都能发挥最佳作用。我开发了一个座位选择算法，在我最后一次发现补助金中将座位与振动环境相匹配。然而，座椅只是复杂工作环境的一个组成部分。车辆操作者经常采用笨拙的姿势，例如颈部和躯干旋转，以便获得安全操作车辆所需的视野。能量直接影响振动通过身体的传递。例如，脊柱姿势影响生物动力学响应，如表观质量和座椅到头部的振动传递率。* 本提案的第一个短期目标是评估在现实模拟职业任务期间身体姿势对其生物动力学反应的影响。这种方法的关键方面包括使用我们当前的虚拟现实叉车模拟器在逼真的模拟下执行此分析。使用机器人平台产生振动，车辆座椅和控制与工业车辆相匹配，使用虚拟现实模拟视觉环境，使用游戏软件引擎模拟工作场所任务。该项目将专注于开发信号处理方法，用于将生物动力学测量窗口化到特定姿势，类似于用于不同类别身体姿势的短时傅立叶变换。这种方法将表征诸如随激励振幅增加的表观软化等要素。*本建议的第二个目标是评估的影响，性别和人体测量学的生物动力学反应，在现实模拟的职业任务。这是一个重要的问题，原因有两个：它直接关系到这项研究计划的长期目标，即了解振动能量如何在人类中传播和衰减，它将确定可能影响加拿大工业中越来越多的女性工人的不同潜在风险因素。该提案的新奇在于结合基础科学方法来量化全身振动的生物动力学响应以及身体姿势的影响，同时在高生物逼真度的虚拟工作环境中进行这些研究。这是一个重要的发展，对车辆工程和人体工程学都有影响，并可能对减少加拿大工业中全身振动损伤的负担产生广泛的影响。

Whole-body vibration (WBV) affects heavy mobile machinery operators and is a significant health risk for 7% of the workforce. Vibration exposures vary between industrial environments, for example between mining and forestry environments. Industrial seats are one engineering control measure that can effectively reduce vibration exposures, but we have observed that individual seats are best-suited to attenuate WBV in specific vibration environments – they do not work optimally in all applications. I developed a seat selection algorithm for matching seats with vibration environments within my last Discovery Grant. However, the seats are merely one component of the complex workplace environment. Vehicle operators frequently adopt awkward postures, such as neck and trunk rotations, in order to gain the necessary field of view to safely operate the vehicle. Posture directly influences the transmission of vibrations through the body. For example, spinal posture influences the biodynamic responses such as apparent mass and the seat-to-head vibration transmissibility. ***The first short-term goal of this proposal is to evaluate the influence of body posture on their biodynamic response during realistic simulation of occupational tasks. The key aspects of this approach include performing this analysis under realistic simulations using our current virtual reality forklift simulator. The vibrations are produced using a robotic platform, the vehicle seating and controls match the industrial vehicle, the visual environment is simulated using virtual reality, and the workplace tasks are simulated using a gaming software engine. This project will focus on developing signal processing methods for windowing the biodynamic measures to specific postures, similar to Short Time Fourier Transforms for different categories of body posture. This approach will characterize elements such as the apparent softening with increasing excitation amplitude.***The second objective of this proposal is to evaluate the influence of gender and anthropometrics on biodynamic responses during realistic simulation of occupational tasks. This is an important issue for two reasons: it directly relates to the long-term goal of this research program of understanding how vibration energy is transmitted and attenuated in humans, and it will identify the different potential risk factors that may affect the growing number of female workers in Canadian industry.******The novelty of this proposal is combining the basic science approach to quantify biodynamic responses to whole-body vibration, and the influence of body posture, whilst performing these studies in a high-biofidelity virtual workplace environment. This is an important development with implications for both vehicle engineering and ergonomics, and may have broadly reaching implications for reducing the burden of whole body vibration injuries in Canadian industry.**