• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.715-725
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• 2011

Objective: This study is aimed at developing Articulated Human Models(AHM) using superquadrics to improve the geometric accuracy of the body shape. Background: The previous work presents the AHM with geometrical simplification such as ellipsoids to improve analysis efficiency. However, because of the simplicity, their physical properties such as a center of mass and moment of inertia are computed with errors compared to their actual values. Method: This paper introduces a three steps method to present the AHM with superquadrics. First, a 3D whole body scan data are divided into 17 body segments according to body joints. Second, superquadric fitting is employed to minimize the Euclidean distance between body segments and superquadrics. Finally, Fee-Form Deformation is used to improve accuracy over superquadric fitting. Results: Our computational experiment shows that the superquadric models give better accuracy of dynamic analysis than that of ellipsoid ones. Conclusion: We generate the AHM composed of 17 superquadrics and 16 joints using superquadric fitting. Application: The AHM using superquadrics can be used as the base model for dynamics and ergonomics applications with better accuracy because it presents the human motion effectively.

• Coupled systems mechanics
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.1-20
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• 2023

On the basis of the explicit time-domain method, an investigation is performed on the influence of the rotational stiffness and rotational damping of the vehicle body and front-rear bogies on the dynamic responses of the vehicle-bridge coupled systems. The equation of motion for the vehicle subsystem is derived employing rigid dynamical theories without considering the rotational stiffness and rotational damping of the vehicle body, as well as the front-rear bogies. The explicit expressions for the dynamic responses of the vehicle and bridge subsystems to contact forces are generated utilizing the explicit time-domain method. Due to the compact wheel-rail model, which reflects the compatibility requirement of the two subsystems, the explicit expression of the evolutionary statistical moment for the contact forces may be performed with relative ease. Then, the evolutionary statistical moments for the respective responses of the two subsystems can be determined. The numerical results indicate that the simplification of vehicle model has little effect on the responses of the bridge subsystem and the vehicle body, except for the responses of the rotational degrees of freedom for the vehicle subsystem, regardless of whether deterministic or random analyses are performed.