Professional Documents
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1 (2001) S101S110
www.elsevier.com/locate/clinbiomech
Abstract
Objective. The study was aimed to investigate the mechanical impedance of the sitting human body and to compare data obtained
in laboratory single-axis investigations with multi-axis data from in vehicle measurements.
Design. The experiments were performed in a laboratory for single-axis measurements. The multi-axis exposure was generated
with an eight-seat minibus where the rear seats had been replaced with a rigid one. The subjects in the multi-axis experiment all
participated in the single-axis experiments.
Background. There are quite a few investigations in the literature describing the human response to single-axis exposure. The
response from the human body can be expected to be aected by multi-axis input in a dierent way than from a single-axis exposure.
The present knowledge of the eect of multiple axis exposure is very limited.
Methods. The measurements were performed using a specially designed force and accelerometer plate. This plate was placed
between the subject and the hard seat.
Results. Outcome shows a clear dierence between mechanical impedance for multi-axis exposure compared to single-axis. This is
especially clear in the x-direction where the dierence is very large.
Conclusion. The conclusion is that it seems unlikely that single-axis mechanical impedance data can be directly transferred to a
multi-axis environment. This is due to the force cross-talk between dierent directions. 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights
reserved.
Keywords: Whole-body; Vibration; Multi-axis; Mechanical impedance
1. Introduction
Knowledge of how vibration is transmitted to and
through the human body can provide an important
input to our understanding of human response to wholebody vibration (WBV). For instance, biodynamic
studies have identied critical frequency ranges, i.e.,
resonant frequencies, for dierent parts of the body,
such as the eyes, head, shoulders, neck and spine (e.g.,
[13]). It is possible that some types of detrimental
eects are closely related to WBV exposures that contain
frequencies leading to a resonant behaviour of the body
or parts of the body. It has for instance been shown that
the spine has a resonant frequency of about 5 Hz [1,2,4],
i.e., a frequency which is produced in many types of
vehicles and earth-moving machinery [5]. This might be
a causal or a contributing factor for the development of
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: patrik.holmlund@niwl.se (P. Holmlund).
low back pain among professional drivers [6]. Understanding of whole-body dynamics is also necessary for
proper design of protective measures, such as suspension
seats.
The mechanical driving point impedance can be used
to describe the biodynamical properties of the human
body. It species the complex ratio between the dynamic
force to which the subject is exposed and the resulting
body motion in terms of velocity. The international
standard, ISO/CD 5982 [7], presents diagrams showing
the modulus and phase of the driving point impedance
of the human body in the z-direction for an upright
sitting posture. The diagrams cover about 80% of the
range of experimental values obtained from available
literature, predominantly published before 1970 (for
references, see ISO/CD 5982 [7]). It is clearly stated in
the standard that presented information is aicted with
certain restrictions, among which the most important
are the limited number of included subjects (39 males),
frequency range (0.530 Hz), input acceleration amplitudes 12 m s 2 , z-direction only, whole-body weights
0268-0033/01/$ - see front matter 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Table 1
Mean (M), standard deviation (SD) maximum (max) and minimum (min) values for the subjects' age (years), body weight (kg) and height (cm) in the
two laboratory studies and the corresponding data for the three subjects from the in vehicle study
Female
M (SD, max, min)
Male
M (SD, max, min)
All
M (SD, max, min)
Laboratory experiments
z-direction
n
Age
Weight
Height
15
24 (2, 30, 32)
66 (10, 93, 54)
168 (6, 180, 157)
15
38 (12, 58, 22)
74 (9, 92, 57)
177 (6, 190, 167)
30
31 (11, 58, 22)
70 (11, 93, 54)
173 (7, 190, 157)
x-, y-direction
n
Age
Weight
Height
15
34 (11, 511, 22)
63 (7, 76, 54)
167 (4, 173, 160)
15
39 (12, 59, 24)
75 (10, 93, 55)
177 (6, 188, 167)
30
37 (11, 59, 2)
69 (10, 93, 54)
172 (7, 188, 160)
Subject
Age (years)
Height (cm)
Weight (kg)
In vehicle experiments
A
B
C
48
44
35
175
174
176
74
74
74
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Fig. 1. Mechanical impedance and phase data for the z-direction laboratory study.
female subjects. It is clear from the gure that the mechanical impedance in the vertical direction was nonlinear with respect to the acceleration. It can also be
noted that the peaks were shifted towards lower frequencies as the acceleration was increased.
A general nding for both x- and y-direction laboratory experiments, was that the mechanical impedance
increased with frequency up to a rst peak in the range
25 Hz dependent upon each subject (Figs. 2 and 3,
respectively). For most test subjects a second peak in the
range 57 Hz was also observed in the y-direction.
Dierences between the female and male groups in mechanical impedance peak frequency and magnitude were
also observed.
The mean mechanical impedance spectra for the xdirection showed in principal one peak at about 35 Hz
for both females and males (Fig. 2). At low vibration
levels there was an indication of two defuse peaks at
about 3 and 67 Hz. At higher vibration levels only one
peak was discernible. The phase spectra for the six levels
of acceleration were similar for both females and males
in the x-direction while some dierences were discernible
in the y-direction. Generally, the phase decreased from
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Fig. 2. Mechanical impedance and phase data for the x-direction laboratory study.
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Fig. 3. Mechanical impedance and phase data for the y-direction laboratory study.
Fig. 4. Pooled data for dierent experimental conditions (described in the text) showing the mean, maximum and minimum mechanical impedance
and phase.
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Fig. 5. Results from the in vehicle and laboratory measurements. Thick lines indicate in vehicle measurements, for subjects A, B and C (see Table 1).
body is dependent on a number of factors, such as frequency, vibration level and gender. Generally, it applies
for the horizontal directions that the mechanical impedance increases with frequency up to a rst peak
around 24 Hz. For the y-direction one additional peak,
in the range 57 Hz was in most cases discernible. The
rst peak was found to be more distinct for male subjects than for females, who have their highest impedance
magnitude at the second peak. This was also the case for
the vertical direction.
The results from the in vehicle multi-axis measurements of the mechanical impedance clearly indicate a
quite dierent outcome compared to the single-axis
measurements as shown in Fig. 5. The most obvious
dierence is that the mechanical impedance is higher at
lower frequencies in the x-direction than would be expected. This nding raises some important questions.
Firstly, will the biomechanical behaviour of the human
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work also shows results that indicate that motion applied to the human body in one direction will cause
motion also in another direction. This observation is of
course of outer most importance for all kinds of modelling related to human response to vibration, including
biomechanical modelling and health risk assessment.
The phase information between the motion transferred through the human body and the external motion
is extremely important. Since the force component at the
contact point between the body and the seat can be
doubled or cancelled, and as a consequence show completely dierent results than single-axis experiments, one
can only speculate how this could aect the health risk
assessment as dened in ISO 2631 [9]. This standard
does not mention the importance of the phase information, and that the frequency weighting lters dened
in the standard destroys this information.
A goal with the in vehicle experiments in the vehicle
was to investigate if it is possible to quantify mechanical
impedance by measurement in a real vehicle environment. The discussion will onward focus on the possible
explanations of the dierences found between the laboratory studies and the in vehicle measurements. The
vibration magnitudes were very dierent in the three
directions measured, and the z-direction dominated the
vibration at frequencies below 15 Hz. This, however,
does not limit the possibilities to compare these results
with earlier laboratory results. For mechanical impedance, a good resemblance with the laboratory data was
found for the z-direction. Corresponding results for the
horizontal directions did not show the same similarities.
The impedance in the y-direction showed a better resemblance with laboratory results than the x-direction.
For the x-direction, mechanical impedance with too
high values at low frequencies and with too low values at
high frequencies was found.
One reason, however, could be the low vibration
magnitudes present in the horizontal directions, but this
is unlikely. As the laboratory studies showed, an increase in vibration magnitude resulted in decreased
mechanical impedance magnitude. For the in vehicle
results, the mechanical impedance magnitude was lower
than in the laboratory study, where a higher vibration
level was used. Furthermore, unreasonably high mechanical impedance was found in the frequency range 2
6 Hz for the x-direction.
The observations mentioned above can be caused by
three things; either a defected or aected force and acceleration component, with respect to magnitude and
phase, or any combination of them. One can, with good
reason, assume that the acceleration component is not
the cause. This is because acceleration is the input that
eects the human body to produce a force. Thus a
change in acceleration results in a change in force. A
force component could induce a movement but it is not
probable that it could actually move the whole vehicle.
Since the path from the seat plate, which includes the
accelerometer, through the seat, seat base frame and
chassis is almost rigid, the force has to be so high that it
can move the minibus's suspension. Ruling out acceleration, leaves force signal and/or phase for explanation.
Studying the formulae for calculating mechanical impedance provides some clues;
Zf
F f
vf
Ns=m:
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2
Fig. 6. Force components obtained during single-axis random excitation (120 Hz, 0:25 m sr:m:s:
) and simultaneous measurements in x-, y- and zdirection.
In order to evaluate fully the biomechanical properties of the human body in an actual vibration environment, more studies of the eect of force components
originating from other directions are needed. For instance, the magnitude, phase and non-linearity of force
cross-talk need to be determined. Experiments with
multi-axis vibration where one or two directions are
kept constant and one or two directions could be varied,
would, in this context be of great interest.
Acknowledgements
5. Conclusions
The data presented in this paper show dierent for
the seated human mechanical impedance when measured in a single-axis compared with a multi-axis wholebody vibration environment. The reason for this dierence is most likely that a single-axis vibration exposure
results in motion and dynamic forces also in other directions. The consequence of this is that biomechanical
models as well as guidelines for health risk assessment
must be multi-axis sensitive to be useful in most areas.
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