Although automatic techniques have been employed in manufacturing industries
to increase productivity and efficiency, there are still lots of manual
handling jobs, especially for assembly and maintenance jobs. In these jobs,
musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are one of the major health problems due to
overload and cumulative physical fatigue. With combination of conventional
posture analysis techniques, digital human modelling and simulation (DHM)
techniques have been developed and commercialized to evaluate the potential
physical exposures. However, those ergonomics analysis tools are mainly based
on posture analysis techniques, and until now there is still no fatigue index
available in the commercial software to evaluate the physical fatigue easily
and quickly. In this paper, a new muscle fatigue and recovery model is proposed
and extended to evaluate joint fatigue level in manual handling jobs. A special
application case is described and analyzed by digital human simulation
technique.Comment: IDMME - Virtual Concept, Beijing : Chine (2008
