• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.93-107
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• 2000

The excessive exposure to powered hand tools can cause damage to nerves, impair blood circulation, and musculoskeletal damage. The symptoms associated with hand-arm vibration syndrome (HAVS) include numbness, tingling, pain and subsequent reduced dexterity of the hands. This study was performed to report the prevalence of the HAVS and evaluate its related factors among the workers using powered hand tools. Total 282 workers in 11 plants of Kyungki and Inchon areas were examined. A standard symptom questionnaire was developed and administered to collect information on personal characteristics, work history, operating conditions, tool characteristics, and subjective symptoms of HAVS. Mean values (standard deviations) of the age, the duration of powered hand tools used, and the daily hours using powered hand tools were 38.3(8.9) years, 79.3(62.2) months and 6.0(2.6) hours, respectively. 132 workers(46.8%) showed vibration-induced white finger symptoms according to the Taylor-Pelmear classification, and 30 workers(10.6%) were interfered with the work. The results of a multiple logistic regression analysis controlling for age and daily working hours showed that smoking, work duration, weight of tools, and continuous work over 2 hours were significantly associated with the symptom of HAVS.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.959-974
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• 2014

Hand-Arm Vibration Syndrome (HAVS) is a group of diseases caused by exposure of the hands to vibration while operating the hand held power tools such as road breaker, drilling machine, demolition hammer in construction works. In this paper, area-changed capacitive micro-accelerometer is designed to measure the vibration exposure on worker's hand when operating a drilling machine on various blocks such as clay block, paver block and solid cement block. The design process includes mathematical modelling of micro-accelerometer and simulations are done using INTELLISUITE 8.6. Experimental results are taken for various blocks surfaces using conventional and micro-accelerometer. Comparisons show that usage of area-changed micro-accelerometer for Hand-arm vibration monitoring provides better sensitivity, which in turn reduces the risk of HAVS in workers.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.29-37
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• 2007

This study was performed to evaluate the characteristics of transmitted vibration to hand-arm system under different work posture while operating a light-weighted powered hand grinder. For the experiment, 8 different types of wrist posture (natural, unlar-flexion, radual-flexion, flexion, extension, complex posture, and etc.) and 3 types of feed force (20[N], 50[N], 70[N]) were considered. 10 male subjects were employed to polish metal plate with a hand grinder. All of them were normal and healthy with no history and symptom of the work related musculoskeletal disorders in the dominant hand. Vibration acceleration data were recorded with sampling rate, 2048[Hz]. In addition, unweighted overall R.M.S. acceleration at the tool and wrist, and transmissibility between them were used to evaluate factors from the recorded tri-axial vibration acceleration. The results indicate that transmissibility of natural wrist posture was significantly higher than others. In addition, as the feed force becomes larger, the vibration was transmitted in large quantities to hand-arm system through radius.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.60-68
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• 2009

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the compatibility of anti-vibration gloves, to predict the attenuation of vibration with different types of anti-vibration gloves, to estimate the spectra of the ISO 10819 standard, and to present an oscillating spectrum adequate for vibrating tools. This paper use two ISO standards for the measurement and evaluation of hand-arm vibration. Some anti-vibration gloves can attenuate vibration, but all the anti-vibration gloves in this study do not satisfy the ISO 10819 requirements. In case of equal vibration types, the outside materials are effective in order of leather, fabrics and rubber-coating. Anti-vibration gloves manufactured in the United State satisfy ISO 10819 criteria using United State subjects, but do not satisfy ISO 10819 using Japanese subjects. M-spectrum acceleration exists below 10Hz and H-spectrum exists above 500Hz. Generally vibrating tools have the peak of Z-axis, but generation of vibration differ from each vibrating tools.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.27 no.4 s.48
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• pp.763-776
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• 1994

Recent studies reveal that grip forces during the hand-arm vibration are most significant for the genesis of vibration-induced white linger syndrome. Therefore, exerted grip forces and skin temperatures of fingers were regarded as dependent variables in experiments and the effects of grip temperature, noise, pushing force, vibration and the combined effect of vibration and pushing force were studied. The objectives of the present study were, first, to varify and compare the changes of grip force affected by grip temperature, noise, pushing force, vibration and the combined effect of vibration and pushing force and, second, to observe the reaction of finger skin temperature affected by above factors. Forty-six healthy male students ($25.07{\pm}2.85$) participated in five systematically permuted trials, which endured 4 minutes each other. Experiments were executed in a special chamber with an air temperature of 21C. In each experiments, the subjects were exposed to five experiment types: (1) grip force of 25N only, (2) pushing force of 50N, (3) acceleration of vibration $7.1m/sec^2(z-direction)$, (4) pink noise of 95 dB (A) and (5) combination of pushing force 50N and acceleration of vibration $7.1m/sec^2$. A repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed on the grip force to test whether it was affected by noise, pushing force, vibration and pushing force. The present results show that vibration was significantly related to the increase of grip force, but the other factors, such as pushing force, noise and grip temperature had no signigicant influence on the increase of grip force, and that the reaction of finger skin temperature were significantly affected by the skin temperature at start of experiment and grip temperature, not grip force and other experimental conditions. Therefore, we suggest that the management for decreasing the grip force is meaningful to prevent the occurrence of Hand-arm vibration syndrome (HAVS).