Transmission of vibration energy to different parts of the human hand-arm system

The aim of this study was to investigate the transmission of vibration energy to three selected points along the hand and arm (knuckle, wrist and elbow) and to compare the energy transmission for two different kinds of vibration exposures, i.e. random and sinusoidal. The transmission of vibration energy was estimated for ten subjects during exposure to random (within the frequency range 20-5000 Hz) and sinusoidal vibration at eight different frequencies (20, 40, 80, 160, 320, 630, 1250 and 1600 Hz). The random and sinusoidal vibrations had a frequency-weighted acceleration level of 3 m/s(2). The energy transmission was determined by simultaneous vibration measurements at the vibrating handle and in the hand-arm system. The measurements were made with a laser-velocity transducer and specially constructed equipment. The grip and feed forces were held constant at 40 N. The results show that the energy transmission decreases with the distance from the source. The results also show that the energy transmission is dependent on the frequency for the random vibration exposures. No clear frequency dependence of the energy transmission could be found for the sinusoidal vibrations. It may also be concluded that there are differences in the energy transmission due to types of exposure, sinusoidal vibration showing higher transmission of energy to the hand-arm system than random vibration, especially at higher frequencies.