Essay On Human Response To Vibrations

1.1 Motivation and Objectives Humans have always been passionate to design and create new technologies. Most of these activities involve exposure to vibration for example, daily lives are exposed to various sources of vibrations like in buses, trains, and cars. The other include at workplace like vibrations produced by hand-tools, machinery and heavy vehicles. Human response to vibration is multidisciplinary in nature and depends on the understanding of human (biological, anatomical and physiological aspects), their response (psychological and biomechanical aspects) and the nature of vibration (in terms of the engineering and the underlying physics).

Human vibration is defined as the effect of mechanical vibration in the environment in the human body. Human vibration is classified into two types namely whole-body vibration and human-arm vibration. Whole-body vibration is transmitted to the body as a whole and is mainly through the supporting surface. Prolonged exposure to whole body vibrations can either cause permanent physical damage or disturb the nervous system. Human-arm vibration is experienced through hand and arm. Daily exposure to human-arm vibration over a number of years can cause permanent damage.

Human arm is considered as a system with large number of homogenous masses of various size and structure, different

The upper arm extends from the shoulder to the elbow and provided pulling and lifting strength. The elbow is a hinged joint which allows the arm to open up to 180 degrees at full extension. The forearm is between the wrist and the elbow. The muscles in the forearm rotate, flex and extend the wrist. The wrist consists of eight carpal bones with multiple muscles and tendons. The hand has five fingers that allows humans to do complicated tasks. The humerus bone joins the scapula at the shoulder joint with radius and ulna at the elbow