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Effects of Pressure Suit and Race on Functional Reach, Static and Dynamic Strength

In the design of any manual workspace, it is important for the designers to have access to data that can illustrate reach capabilities under real-time work situation. Wearing bulky clothing (pressure suit) and protective restraints (seat or shoulder harness belts) is often mandatory in high acceleration work environments. Clothing and personal equipment worn can influence the functional reach and strength values since they add to the body size. The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of wearing a VKK-6M pressure suit on functional reach limitations and strength values.
The technology of incorporating body dimensions into cockpit design primarily evolved in western countries and therefore the only datasets available is of Caucasians. When designing equipment for populations other than westerners, western anthropometric data is inappropriate. In this thesis a representative sample of Caucasian and Asian Indian population are chosen and their reach envelopes are compared. Subjects reach and strength data are collected with and without-suit and analyzed to see the effect of pressure suit on reach and strength.
The study concludes that wearing pressure suit reduces the average reach significantly (at alpha = 0.05). The 5th percentile Asian Indian and Caucasian reach envelopes are derived for placement of critical cockpit controls. Race-reach study showed a significant difference in shoulder breadth of Caucasians and Asian Indians (at alpha = 0.05), but no apparent relationship between bideltoid breadth and thumb tip reach was found. The study on significance of wearing pressure suit on strengths (at alpha = 0.05) concluded, suit does not affect static or dynamic strength.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-10272004-084348
Date12 November 2004
CreatorsUppu, Nageswara Rao
ContributorsCraig Harvey, Thomas Ray, Fereydoun Aghazadeh
PublisherLSU
Source SetsLouisiana State University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-10272004-084348/
Rightsunrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report.

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