RESEARCH PAPER
Vibration energy absorption in the whole-body system of a tractor operator
 
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1
Industrial Institute of Agricultural Engineering, Poznan, Poland
 
2
University of Life Sciences in Lublin, Poland
 
 
Corresponding author
Wojciech Tanaś   

University of Life Sciences in Lublin, Poland
 
 
Ann Agric Environ Med. 2014;21(2):399-402
 
KEYWORDS
ABSTRACT
Many people are exposed to whole-body vibration (WBV) in their occupational lives, especially drivers of vehicles such as tractor and trucks. The main categories of effects from WBV are perception degraded comfort interference with activities-impaired health and occurrence of motion sickness. Absorbed power is defined as the power dissipated in a mechanical system as a result of an applied force. The vibration-induced injuries or disorders in a substructure of the human system are primarily associated with the vibration power absorption distributed in that substructure. The vibration power absorbed by the exposed body is a measure that combines both the vibration hazard and the biodynamic response of the body. The article presents measurement method for determining vibration power dissipated in the human whole body system called Vibration Energy Absorption (VEA). The vibration power is calculated from the real part of the force-velocity cross-spectrum. The absorbed power in the frequency domain can be obtained from the cross-spectrum of the force and velocity. In the context of the vibration energy transferred to a seated human body, the real component reflects the energy dissipated in the biological structure per unit of time, whereas the imaginary component reflects the energy stored/released by the system. The seated human is modeled as a series/parallel 4-DOF dynamic models. After introduction of the excitation, the response in particular segments of the model can be analyzed. As an example, the vibration power dissipated in an operator has been determined as a function of the agricultural combination operating speed 1.39 – 4.16 ms-1.
 
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eISSN:1898-2263
ISSN:1232-1966
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