Despite great advances in the field of ergonomics, its integration into computer-aided product design remains a great need, especially during conceptual design. In order that a product be designed for safety and comfort, it is essential that pertinent ergonomic principles be imposed as design constraints during design conceptualization. Further, it is vital that these constraints be propagated to downstream design activities so that they can be considered along with other design constraints such as manufacturing and assembly, in deriving design alternatives and subsequently in determining the outcome of the final product. This should enable the design of safer and more comfortable products, minimize design iterations that often result from ergonomic violations, reduce design cycle time and hence minimize product lifecycle cost.
The objective of this dissertation was to provide an efficient and effective method for integrating ergonomics into computer aided product design. To achieve this objective, first, the principles of ergonomics in relation to product design were stated and then represented algebraically so that these principles can easily be integrated into computer aided design. Next, discrete products were categorized into twelve classes on the basis of the function(s) users would perform on them. Ergonomic principles constraining each product class were then provided. As such, by means of this categorization a designer should easily acquire ergonomic rules that constrain a design within a product category. Thirdly, to make ergonomic constraints available to downstream design activities for the generation of design alternatives and subsequently, the derivation of the final product, a means, based on Extensible Markup Language technology, was provided for ergonomic constraints propagation. This work was implemented in a Java-based software application and demonstrated in the design of a wheelchair seat cushion. For validation, the results obtained were compared to those of an existing product.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-04102005-135304 |
| Date | 01 February 2006 |
| Creators | Nwaigwe, Adaeze |
| Contributors | Rakie Cham, Mary Sacre, Harvey Wolfe, Rory Cooper, Bart Nnaji |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04102005-135304/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto 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 University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, 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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