• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
• /
• v.24 no.2
• /
• pp.89-93
• /
• 2009

The muscular-skeletal disorders that have become a major issue recently in Korean industrial safety area are mainly caused by manual material handling task. The objective of this study is to provide scientific data for the establishment of work safety standard for Korean workers through the experiments of lifting task under various conditions, in order to prevent the muscular-skeletal disorders in the industrial work site. This study used the psychophysical approach to determine the maximum acceptable weight(MAWL) for seven young male subjects, and used isometric and isoinertial strength variables as predictors to develop prediction models. Also, the oxygen consumption, heart rate, and RPE were measured or recorded while subjects were lifting their MAWL. Three different lifting frequencies(1, 3, 5lifts/min) with two lifting range from floor to knuckle height and knuckle to shoulder height for one hour's work shift using free style lifting technique were studied. These results may not only provide scientific data in establishing the safety standards for Korean workers' lifting tasks, but also contribute preventing the rapidly increasing muscular-skeletal disorders lately on the industrial site.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
• /
• v.21 no.1
• /
• pp.81-93
• /
• 2002

This study aims to provide joint angles of comfort for females, based on the psychophysical scaling method. Ten female subjects participated in the experiment for measuring perceived discomfort for varying joint motions. The subjects were instructed to maintain given joint motions for a minute, and to rate their perceived discomfort for the motions during a minute's rest by using the free modulus method of the magnitude estimation. Joint angles of comfort were calculated from the regression equations based on the experimental results, in which levels of joint motions were used as independent variables and perceived discomforts as dependent variables. The results showed that joint angles of comfort for the joint motions investigated were much smaller than full range of motions for corresponding joint motions. The ratios of joint angle of comfort to its range motion for the hip were found to be smallest of all joint motions dealt with in this study, and those for the neck were the largest. In addition, comfortable joint angles for females were much smaller than those for males. It is recommended that when designing or evaluating workplaces ergonomically, different comfortable joint angles should be applied according to workers' or population's gender.

• Proceedings of the ESK Conference
• /
• 2004.10a
• /
• pp.23-23
• /
• 2004

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.3-13
• /
• 1993

A psychophysical measurement technique called "magnitude estimation" was used to evaluate several interior design alternatives for a high speed train. Pas- senger activity, seat direction, and passenger age were manipulated by using a three factor within-subjects experimental design. During the experiment, two dependent measures, a line length and a numerical estimate for each alternative design were collected to validate the experimental procedures. The results showed that pasnger seats arranged in the same direction as the running direction of the train was favored nine times more than the opposite. Also, the subjects preferred listening to music in a coach train to the other activities such as reading newspaper, watching a movie, and resting. This paper demonstrates that a psychophysical technique can be sued in the design of a development process, especially when it is difficult to quantify design variables such as subjective opinion or preference, etc.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
• /
• v.21 no.3 s.75
• /
• pp.122-126
• /
• 2006

This study investigated effect of arm posture, wrist motion repetition and external load on perceived discomfort through an experiment. Eleven female college students participated in the experiment, where shoulder, elbow and wrist motion, wrist motion repetition, and external load were used as independent variables. The results showed that only external load had a significant effect on perceived discomfort. The perceived discomfort linearly increased with external load. Based on the results of this and the previous study for males, it was concluded that effect of external load on perceived discomfort was larger than that of other posture and motion repetition related variables. This implies that effect of external load is the most important factor considered in the first place when assessing postural load.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
• /
• v.15 no.5
• /
• pp.56-62
• /
• 2007

In order to compare subjective and objective assessments, a passenger car was driven at several speeds over several road profiles. To measure the acceleration signals experienced by the seated subject who provided an subjective assessment, four triaxial translational accelerometers and one triaxial gyro sensor were mounted on the steering wheel and on the passenger seat and floor, respectively. Correlations were determined between the measured accelerations and the subjective assessments of 3 expert subjects and 9 general subjects using psychophysical power law.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Emotion and Sensibility Conference
• /
• 2003.11a
• /
• pp.1311-1318
• /
• 2003

최근 흡한 속건성은 사이언스 소재로 가장 보편적으로 이용되고 있는 소재 성능이다. 하지만 아직 제대로 된 측정 평가법이 존재하고 있지 않고, 몇몇 의류업체에서는 단순히 객관적 속성만을 측정하고 있다. 본 연구에서는 객관적 속성인지들의 연속적이 값들이 실제 인체에서는 얼마만큼의 변별력으로 인식되는지 정신물리학적 측정법으로 최소 자극치(PSE)를 구하여 등급을 나누어 보았다. 시료는 흡한속건성 직물로 가장 많이 이용되고 있는 Coolmax(R), Coolever(R), 친수성 이중직물의 3개 그룹으로 나누었고, 측정 인자로 객관적 속성인자는 cling force, drying time을, 이와 대응하는 주관적 속성인자는 clinginess, dampness를 측정하고 각각의 PSE값을 구하였다. 그룹에 따라 객관적 속성인자 값들이 이라고 느끼는 PSE 구간까지 도달하는 시간과 속력을 측정하여 그룹마다의 흡한속건 등급을 정하였다. 또한 설계된 소재의 성능을 간접적으로 알 수 있는 transmissibility라는 인자도 도입하여 수분 전달성도 객관적으로 살펴볼 수 있었다. Clinginess, Dampness, Transmissibility 각 인자들을 평가해본 결과 Coolmax(R) 가 가장 우수함을 알 수 있었다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Emotion and Sensibility Conference
• /
• 2001.11a
• /
• pp.76-80
• /
• 2001

The weight of shoes may serve as a determining factor of perceived comfort and feel to the consumer in their purchase and repurchase decisions of footwear. People, however, seem to have trouble in accurately judging the feeling of weight of shoes on their feet. This paper made a psychophysical study of subjects′ sensitivity to weight on their feet and in their hands. The experiment consisted of 3 tests according to the motions people make when they evaluate the feel of shoes: 1) vertical lifting of a shoe on the foot ("hefting" in on the foot) 2) swing the shod foot back and forth; 3) holding and lifting a shoe by hand ("hefting" it in the hand). The method of constant stimuli and magnitude estimation were used for the experiment with 20 subjects. Weber′s ratios and the power law exponents obtained for each of the three tests were 0.156 and 0.713, 0.108 and 0.970, and 0.065 and 1.249, respectively in the same order of the previously listed tests.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
• /
• v.18 no.4E
• /
• pp.10-19
• /
• 1999

Psychophysical approaches to the room acoustics have been made in number of researches. The present study is looking at whether the listener's perception of frequency change in rooms are dependent on the acoustics of a listening environment. P(C)s for frequency change in short tones were measured in different listening conditions. Two experiments were carried out to investigate the influence of room acoustics on the listener's perception of frequency change, and its implication for evaluating the acoustics of listening environments were examined and discussed. It was found that the temporal and spectral contents of reflections from room surfaces might be an important factor which influenced the listener's perception of frequency change in a reverberant sound field. This implicates that psychophysical approach by measuring listener's frequency change perception might be an useful tool for evaluating room acoustics. However, cares should be taken, since some individual differences were found to exist with respect to the direction of frequency change.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.59-70
• /
• 2001

White uniformity is one of the important inspection factors determining the image quality of CRT screen. In the full white pattern, white uniformity means the degree of uniform distribution of white color across the whole screen. To elicit the sensitivity factors affecting the decision of the white uniformity quality, experiments in which participants were confronted with 6 evaluation points embedded in 3 measurement groups on a CRT screen were conducted to gather the psychophysical data that are the level of white uniformity subjects perceived and CA100 produced. These data were used to develop a modified CIE1976 equation for calculating white uniformity. Performance comparison between the original CIE1976 equation and the modified equation was conducted in terms of accuracy test and magnitude estimation. It was concluded the modified equation is more sensitive in the change of white uniformity, compared to the original CIE1976 equation.