Vibration transmission characteristics of the human hand-arm and gloves

Abstract A test methodology using a laser-based vibration sensor is proposed to evaluate the vibration isolation performance of the commercially available anti-vibration and general purpose industrial hand gloves. The vibration transmission characteristics of the human hand-arm system are investigated through measurement of vibration transmitted to the fingers, knuckle and the wrist in the 10–500 Hz frequency range, under different magnitudes of grip forces and vibration excitations. The vibration attenuation performance of nine different gloves is investigated through measurement and analysis of the vibration response of the coupled hand-glove system. The vibration response characteristics are utilized to propose two- and three-degrees-of-freedom (DOF) lumped parameter linear models of the hand and hand-glove systems, respectively. A comparison of the vibration transmissibility response of the proposed models with the measured data revealed reasonable correlation in the frequency range of interest. The results of the study further revealed that the gloves do not yield effective attenuation of vibration caused by the hand-held power tools.