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

全身振动与脊柱姿势之间复杂相互作用的实验室评估

• 批准号: RGPIN-2016-05187
• 负责人: Dickey, James
• 金额: $ 1.89万
• 依托单位: University of Western Ontario
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2019-01-01 至 2020-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=681546
• 关键词: Laboratory; evaluation; complex; interplay; between

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.**

全身振动（WBV）影响重型移动机械操作员，对7%的劳动力构成重大健康风险。振动暴露在不同的工业环境中有所不同，例如在采矿和林业环境之间。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，它们并非在所有应用中都能达到最佳效果。我开发了一个座位选择算法来匹配振动环境下的座位。然而，座椅只是复杂工作环境的一个组成部分。为了获得安全操作车辆所需的视野，车辆驾驶员经常会采取一些尴尬的姿势，比如转动脖子和躯干。姿势直接影响振动在全身的传递。例如，脊柱姿势影响生物动力学反应，如表观质量和座位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时身体姿势对其生物动力学反应的影响。该方法的关键方面包括使用我们目前的虚拟现实叉车模拟器在现实模拟下进行分析。振动是由机器人平台产生的，车辆座椅和控制与工业车辆相匹配，视觉环境是用虚拟现实模拟的，工作场所的任务是用游戏软件引擎模拟的。该项目将专注于开发信号处理方法，将生物动力学测量窗口化到特定的姿势，类似于针对不同类别的身体姿势的短时间傅里叶变换。这种方法将描述一些元素，如随着激励幅度的增加而出现的明显软化。***本提案的第二个目标是评估性别和人体测量学对现实模拟职业任务中生物动力学反应的影响。这是一个重要的问题，有两个原因：它直接关系到这个研究项目的长期目标，即了解振动能量是如何在人类中传播和衰减的，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。******这项提议的新颖之处在于结合了基础科学方法来量化对全身振动的生物动力学反应，以及身体姿势的影响，同时在高生物保真的虚拟工作环境中进行这些研究。这是一项重要的发展，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具有广泛的影响