Title: Influence of postures and vibration magnitude on seat-to-head transmissibility during uniaxial whole body vibration exposure

Authors: Vikas Kumar; V.H. Saran

Addresses: Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India ' Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India

Abstract: Prior understanding of the dynamic behaviour of the human body in the vibrating environment is very important for the vehicle system design. Majority of the past studies have paid attention to the vertical vibration exposure and human body in seated postures without backrest support. In the present work, the seat-to-head transmissibility was studied for the test subjects in four seated postures under the Gaussian random vibration exposure in the three independent translational directions. The experiments were performed on ten healthy male subjects by exposing them to 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 m/s₂ rms vibration magnitude of random vibration in the 0.5-20 Hz frequency range. The vertical backrest support increases the seat-to-head transmissibility during the vertical and fore-and-aft vibration exposure at all levels of vibration magnitude. The nonlinear effects of vibration magnitude on seat-to-head transmissibility are found during the vertical and fore-and-aft vibration exposure.

Keywords: whole body vibration; biodynamics; vehicle backrests; fore-and-aft vibration; lateral vibration; vertical vibration; vehicle vibration; posture; vibration magnitude; seat-to-head transmissibility; vibration exposure; seated postures.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVNV.2015.070026

International Journal of Vehicle Noise and Vibration, 2015 Vol.11 No.2, pp.149 - 164

Received: 20 May 2014
Accepted: 23 Feb 2015
Published online: 24 Jun 2015 *

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