Vibration reduction of human body biodynamic response in sitting posture under vibration environment by seat backrest support

Abstract

Four-degree-of-freedom (4-DOF) human-chair coupling models are constructed to characterize the different contact modes between the head, chest back, waist back and backrest. The seat-to-head transfer ratio (STHT) is used as an evaluation metric for vibration reduction effectiveness. The simulated vibration reduction ratio of the model is close to the experimental results, which proves the validity of the model. The peak STHT is obviously reduced (P < 0.05, T-test) with seat-backrest support. The experiments show that supporting the head ( $a_1$ , P < 0.05, Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed ranks) has the best vibration reduction effect (21%), supporting the chest back ( $a_2$ , P < 0.05) has a reduced effect (11%), and supporting the waist back ( $a_3$ , P < 0.05) has the weakest effect (4%). When the upper torso is in full contact with the backrest, the peak STHT curve and resonance frequency are positively correlated with the contact stiffness of the seat surface and negatively correlated with the contact damping. In order to reduce the seat-to-head transfer ratio, the lowest STHT peak and lowest total energy judgments were proposed as the selection methods for the selection of the contact stiffness and damping of the backrest in two environments (periodic and non-periodic excitation), respectively.

Keywords: Backrest; Human–chair coupling model; STHT.