Response of the seated human body to whole-body vertical vibration: biodynamic responses to mechanical shocks

Abstract

The biodynamic response of the seated human body has been investigated with 20 males exposed to upward and downward shocks at 13 fundamental frequencies (1–16 Hz) and 18 magnitudes (up to ±8.3 ms⁻²). For 1- and 2- degree-of-freedom models, the stiffness and damping coefficients were obtained by fitting seat acceleration waveforms predicted from the measured force to the measured seat acceleration waveform. Stiffness and damping coefficients were also obtained in the frequency domain with random vibration. The optimum stiffness and damping coefficients varied with the magnitude and the frequency of shocks. With both upward and downward shocks, the resonance frequency of the models decreased from 6.3 to 4 Hz as the vibration dose values of the shocks increased from 0.05 to 2.0 ms^−1.75. The stiffness and damping obtained from responses to shocks were correlated with, and similar to, the stiffness and damping obtained with random vibration.

Practitioner Summary: When modelling the dynamic response of the seated human body to vertical acceleration less than 1 g, the relation between force and acceleration can be well represented by a single degree-of-freedom model although the optimum stiffness and damping depend on the magnitude and frequency of sinusoidal, random or shock motion.

Keywords:

• Biodynamics
• mechanical shocks
• apparent mass
• force
• nonlinearity