Biodynamic responses of the seated human body to single-axis and dual-axis vibration

Occupational exposures to vibration always involve multi-axis vibration. Since human responses to vibration are highly nonlinear and cross-coupled, it is to be expected that excitation in one axis will alter response to vibration in another axis. The purpose of this study was to investigate nonlinearity in the apparent masses of subjects seated without a backrest and exposed to single-axis and dual-axis vertical and fore-and-aft excitation. The driving point apparent masses and cross-axis apparent masses in the two translational directions were measured with twelve subjects exposed to random vibration (0.2 to 20 Hz) in all 15 possible combinations of four vibration magnitudes (0, 0.25, 0.5, or 1.0 ms(-2) r.m.s.) in the fore-and-aft and vertical directions. With single-axis excitation (either fore-and-aft or vertical), the median in-line apparent mass exhibited a nonlinear characteristic in which the body softened with increasing magnitude of vibration. With dual-axis excitation, at all magnitudes of vertical excitation the resonance frequency in the vertical apparent mass reduced as the magnitude of fore-and-aft vibration increased, and at all except the greatest magnitude of fore-and-aft excitation the resonance frequency in the fore-and-aft apparent mass reduced as the magnitude of vertical vibration increased. The coherency between the fore-and-aft acceleration and the fore-and-aft force was lowered by the addition of vertical excitation, and the coherency between the vertical acceleration and the vertical force was lowered by the addition of fore-and-aft excitation. The nonlinearity evident in both in-line apparent masses was also evident in the cross-axis apparent masses. It is concluded that with dual-axis excitation the fore-and-aft and vertical response of the seated human body is nonlinear, with resonance frequencies decreasing with increasing magnitude of vibration. Consequently, vibration in one axis (either fore-and-aft or vertical) affects the apparent mass of the body measured in the other axis (either vertical or fore-and-aft).