Cardiovascular response to whole-body vibration on an automobile seat

Abstract

The study aim was to determine whether a relationship exists between the cardiovascular response, measured by HR and HRV and the magnitude of whole-body vibration. Cardiovascular response of sixty male participants in four groups, was measured during three states i.e. (1) no vibration, (2) a reference vibration and (3) an alternative vibration. The reference vibration was the same for all groups with the alternative vibrations different for each group. Weighted vertical seat vibration was 0.66 m.s⁻², root-mean-square for the reference and 0.70, 0.73, 0.76, and 0.79 m.s⁻², root-mean-square for the alternative vibrations. Vibrations only differed in magnitude with the difference between alternative vibrations based on relative difference thresholds. Nonparametric tests compared cardiovascular indicators between groups at State 3 adjusted for state of departure i.e. State 2. No significant differences between groups were found for most of the indicators, suggesting no relationship between cardiovascular response and the magnitude of whole-body vibration.

Practitioner summary: The cardiovascular response to the magnitude of whole-body vibration on an automobile seat was investigated. Results suggest that no relationship exists between the magnitude and cardiovascular response and that the latter may not be as effective as other objective measures (e.g. acceleration) in evaluating the human’s response to whole-body vibration.

Keywords:

• Whole-body vibration
• cardiovascular response
• heart rate
• heart rate variability
• ride comfort

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge Mr. Gehard Kalmeier for his assistance during testing in the pilot and main study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The vertical component ride value in Gräbe et al. (2020) is equivalent to the r.m.s. of the weighted vertical seat surface vibration in the current study.

2 The level of detection probability (i.e. 79.4%) results from the psychophysical method used in determining the relative difference threshold in Gräbe et al. (2020).