Comfort Evaluation for Mine Shuttle Car Seat Designs

Details

• Personal Author:
  Amirouche F ; Jobes, Christopher C. ; Kumar Kittusamy N ; Mayton A
• Description:
  Industrial equipment exposes individuals to whole-body vibration (WBV) and mechanical shock. This exposure can negatively impact their health, safety, comfort, and working efficiency and performance. Accordingly, proper seat design is an important consideration in reducing the adverse effects of WBV exposure to vehicle operators. Since the human body is sensitive to low frequency WBV, ride quality is a basic and important element of good seat design. When designing a suitable seat, it is essential to understand vibration exposure environment of workers and how well they can tolerate this environment. This is particularly true in the mining industry. Mayton et al. reported on a low-coal shuttle car seat design that underwent limited, yet successful underground mine trials. Building on this work, a follow-up study compared NIOSH and existing seat designs on low- and mid-coal seam shuttle cars. The NIOSH seat designs included viscoelastic foam, which has properties similar to those found in a mechanical spring/damper suspension system. The seats also included an adjustable lumbar support and a fore-aft seat adjustment. The NIOSH seat designs contrast with the existing seat design, which have little or no lumbar support and include inexpensive foam padding of the type commonly used in furniture. This paper will focus on the seat designs for the mid-coal seam shuttle car and compare subjective comfort data collected from five vehicle operators with ISO 2631 - based reduced comfort boundary (RCB) analysis of recorded vibration levels. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Engineering Ergonomics Occupational Health Safety Vibration
• Keywords:
  Control-technology Engineering-controls Equipment-design Vibration-control Vibration-disease Vibration-effects Vibration-exposure
• Series:
  Mining Publications
• Publisher:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Proceedings
• Place as Subject:
  Illinois ; OSHA Region 10 ; OSHA Region 3 ; OSHA Region 5 ; Pennsylvania ; Washington
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  PRL - Pittsburgh Research Laboratory ; SRL - Spokane Research Laboratory
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  29-30
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20030962
• Citation:
  Proceedings of the first American conference on human vibration, June 5-7, 2006, Morgantown, West Virginia. Dong R, Krajnak K, Wirth O, Wu J, eds. Morgantown: WV: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No. 2006-140, 2006 Jun; :29-30
• Editor(s):
  Dong R; Krajnak K; Wirth O; Wu J
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2006
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:9594536852b00189b08c5b73d2e6ff3afffaf814a6f3b09c15dd43e74acecf1b2462bd8b48be82ee5b08e39eaf4b6773ff63cf9d0aa8de236636ec393e132960
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/226652/cdc_226652_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 187.97 KB ]