Biomechanical Evaluation of Spinal Loading Using Farm Hand Tools and Handle Design Modifications for Haryana Male Farmer
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ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION
Biomechanical Evaluation of Spinal Loading Using Farm Hand Tools and Handle Design Modifications for Haryana Male Farmers Sandeep Singh Kharb1 • R. M. Belokar1 • Suman Kant1 • Milap Sharma1
Received: 15 June 2020 / Accepted: 14 October 2020 The Institution of Engineers (India) 2020
Abstract Manual farming tools must match the body characteristics of the workers for their safety and performance. With this objective to serve in the present study, 18 body dimensions were measured including age and mass for 200 male farmers from the five districts of Haryana. Handle design of spade and sickle was suggested following the measured body characteristics. Biomechanical study was conducted to evaluate the compression loading at L4– L5 of five subjects using newly designed spade and preexisting spade alternately. A similar virtual environment was developed in the CATIA-V5 to examine the compression loading at L4–L5. The results obtained were compared using t test, which show a significant reduction in compression forces at L4–L5 for p \ 0.05. Keywords Anthropometry Agriculture Compression force at L4–L5 Spade CATIA-V5
Introduction Farmers are routinely engaged in arduous agricultural activities and manual material handling (MMH), which generally exceeds the worker’s capabilities to perform the activity. This type of work may put the workers at the risk of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) and injuries such as lower back disorders (LBDs). Young workers are highly vulnerable to the potential risks of MSDs because of
& Sandeep Singh Kharb [email protected] 1
Production & Industrial Engg. Deptt, Punjab Engineering College (Deemed To Be University), Chandigarh 160012, India
excessive MMH in various jobs such as farming, construction and grocery stores [15]. While performing the agricultural activity such as spading, MMH, weeding, pushing and pulling, the muscle throughout the whole body exerts internal forces and moments at the joints, i.e. wrist, elbow, shoulder and spinal joints to balance the externally applied loads [2]. These internal reaction forces may damage the soft tissues of joints and result in causing musculoskeletal pain and discomfort. Hence, biomechanical evaluations have been employed by various researchers with implementations and validations for the activities [6, 8, 9, 11, 16]. Some of the researchers have developed 2D static biomechanical model for specific activity for the specific joints and body part of the worker such as shoulder, elbow, L4–L5 and L5-S1 to study the muscle strength and energy expenditure requirements to perform the lifting task and also analysed the effects of forces and moments on joints to assess the risk of MSDs specifically on the lower back [3]. But, this static model ignores the muscle cocontraction, kinematics and dynamics effects, which are apparently known for resulting higher stresses [14]. Though the technological advancement and mechanization are growing rapidly in agriculture in North India such as the development of automatic an
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