• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.21 no.11
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• pp.209-218
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• 2004

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a practical and simple method for the identification of the joint mechanical properties and to apply it to human knee joints. The passive moment at a joint was modeled by three mechanical parts, that is, a gravity term, a linear damper term and a nonlinear spring term. Passive pendulum tests were performed in 5 fat and 5 thin men. The data of pendulum test were used to identify the mechanical properties of joints through sequential quadratic programming (SQP) with random initial values. The identification was successful where the normalized root-mean-squared (RMS) errors between the simulated and experimental joint angle trajectories were less than 10％. The parameter values of mechanical properties obtained in this study agreed with literature. The inertia, gravity and the damping constant were greater at fat men, which indicates more resistance to body movement and more energy consumption fer fat men. The suggested method is noninvasive and requires simple setup and short measurement time. It is expected to be useful in the evaluation of joint pathologies.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.23 no.7 s.184
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• pp.152-158
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• 2006

The objective of this work is to develop the knee joint model for representing various pendulum motions and quantifying the spasticity. Knee joint model included the extension and flexion muscles. The joint moment consists of both the active moment from the stretch reflex and the passive moment from the viscoelastic joint properties. The stretch reflex was modeled as nonlinear feedback of muscle length and the muscle lengthening velocity, which is Physiologically-feasible. Moreover, we modeled the spastic reflex as having dynamic threshold to account far the various pendulum trajectories of spastic patients. We determined the model parameters of three patients who showed different pendulum trajectories through minimization of error between experimental and simulated trajectories. The simulated joint trajectories closely matched with the experimental ones, which show the proposed model can predict pendulum motions of patients with different spastic severities. The predicted muscle force from spastic reflex appeared more frequently in the severe spastic patient, which indicates the dynamic threshold relaxes slowly in this patient as is manifested by the variation coefficient of dynamic threshold. The proposed method provides prediction of muscle force and intuitive and objective evaluation of spasticity and it is expected to be useful in quantitative assessment of spasticity.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Emotion and Sensibility Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.35-35
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• 2004

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.188-193
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• 2005

The purpose of this paper is to develop a more precise damper model of the joint for the quantification of the joint mechanical properties. We modified the linear damper model of a knee joint model to nonlinear one. The normalized RMS errors between the simulated and measured joint angle trajectories during passive pendulum test became smaller with the nonlinear damper model than those of the linear one which indicates the nonlinear damper model is better in precision and accuracy. The error between the experimental and simulated knee joint moment also reduced with the nonlinear damper model. The reduction in both the trajectory error and the moment error was significant at the latter part of the pendulum test where the joint angular velocity was small. The nonlinearity of the damper was significantly greater at thin subject group and this indicates the nonlinearity is a useful index of joint mechanical properties.

• Korean Journal of Applied Biomechanics
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.29-37
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• 2015

Objective : The purpose of this study was to investigate the biomechanical properties of shock absorption strategy and postural stability during the drop landing for each types. Methods : The motions were captured with Vicon Motion Capture System, with the fourteen infra-red cameras (100Hz) and synchronized with GRF(ground reaction force) data(1000Hz). Ten male soccer players performed a drop landing with single-leg and bi-legs on the 30cm height box. Dependent variables were the CoM trajectory and the Joint Moment. Statistical computations were performed using the paired t-test and ANOVA with Turkey HSD as post-hoc. Results : The dominant leg was confirmed to show a significant difference between the left leg and right leg as the inverted pendulum model during Drop Landing(Phase 1 & Phase 2). One-leg drop landing type had the higher CoM displacement, the peak of joint moment with the shock absorption than Bi-leg landing type. As a lower extremity joint kinetics analysis, the knee joint showed a function of shock absorption in the anterior-posterior, and the hip joint showed a function of the stability and shock absorption in the medial-lateral directions. Conclusion : These findings indicate that the instant equilibrium of posture balance(phase 1) was assessed by the passive phase as Class 1 leverage on the effect of the stability of shock absorption(phase 2) assessed by the active phase on the effect of Class 2 leverage. Application : This study shows that the cause of musculo-skeletal injuries estimated to be focused on the passive phase of landing and this findings could help the prevention of lower damage from loads involving landing related to the game of sports.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.49-56
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• 2010

In this study, the control performance of a smart top-story isolation system for tall buildings subjected to wind excitation was investigated. To this end, a 77-story tall building structure was employed and wind loads obtained from wind tunnel test were used for numerical simulations. The top-story of an example structure is separated from the main structure by a smart base isolation system composed of friction pendulum systems (FPS) and MR dampers. The primary purpose of the smart top-story isolation system is to mitigate the dynamic responses of the main structure, but the excessive movement of the isolated top story may cause the unstableness of the building structure. Therefore, the skyhook control algorithm was used to effectively reduce both responses of the isolated top story and the main structure. The control performance of the proposed smart top-story isolation system was investigated in comparison with that of the passive top-story isolation system. It has been shown from numerical simulation results that the smart top-story isolation system can effectively reduce wind-induced responses of the example building structure compared to the passive top-story isolation system with reduction of the top-story movement.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.86-93
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• 2023

Pyrotechnic separation devices have been widely used as holding and release mechanism for deployable appendage. However, pyro-shock can cause temporal or permanent damage on shock sensitive components such as electronics, mechanism, and brittle components. This study proposed a low-stiffness blade based passive shock absorber using a multi-layered stiffener laminated with viscoelastic acrylic tapes for reducing transmitted pyro-shock upon explosion of pyrotechnic separation devices. The multi-layered structure with viscoelastic tape has high-damping characteristics to effectively secure structural integrity of low-stiffness blades under the launch environment. The design effectiveness was verified through a shock test by dropping a pendulum. The structural integrity of the shock absorber under a launch environment was evaluated through structural analysis under load conditions with a deployable payload.