Measurement on comfort range of korean population's joint motions for designing and evaluating workplaces

Daily exposure to constrained body postures and deviations from neutral postures over a long period may result in discomfort as well as pains and aches in the muscles, joints, tendons, and other soft tissues. Furthermore, it was known that poor body postures are a major cause of musculoskeletal disorders in industry. Therefore, in this study, comfort ranges of joint motions were obtained as a criterion for evaluating body postures and designing workplaces ergonomically, which were bases on subjects' perceived discomfort level estimated by magnitude estimation. Nineteen healthy male subjects participated in the laboratory study. They results showed that comfort ranges of joint motions occurred in the wrist, elbow, neck, and ankle were little less than their normal range of joint motions, but those in the back(L5/S1) and hip joint were much less than their normal ones. This fact implies that the back and jip movements are more stressful than the other joints movements. It is expected that comfort ranges of joint motions can be used as a valuable guideline when designing and evaluating workplaces.