Gender and anthropometric effects on whole-body vibration power absorption of the seated body

The gender and anthropometric effects on vibration absorbed power characteristics of the seated body are investigated through measurements with 31 males and 27 females considering two different back support conditions, and three levels of vertical vibration (0.25, 0.50, and 0.75 m/s2 rms acceleration) in the 0.5–20 Hz frequency range. The absorbed power responses for the males and females revealed strong gender effect, which could be mostly related to differences in body mass of the two groups. Subsequent analyses were conducted considering different datasets grouped corresponding to three ranges of the body mass-, build-, and stature-related parameters for both the males and females. Notable differences were evident in the absorbed power responses of the males and females with comparable anthropometric dimensions. Males revealed significantly higher peak and total absorbed power responses compared to the females of comparable anthropometric dimensions, except for the lean body mass. The differences, however, were relatively small in the data for males and females of comparable body mass. The peak power for the females, invariably, occurred at a lower frequency than that for the males. The total absorbed power responses revealed some degree of correlations with the body mass, lean body mass, body fat, and hip circumference (r2>0.60), irrespective of the back support condition and excitation magnitude for both the genders.