Human Factor Engineering Tests and Analysis of Rowing Ergometer

• Main Authors: Li,Wunji, 李文基
• Other Authors: Wu,Gangjhy
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/04080662122793431560

碩士 === 國立宜蘭大學 === 生物機電工程學系碩士班 === 99 === This research adopted both physical experiments and computer-aided simulation technology to explore some human factor engineering relates issues of indoor rowing exercise using rowing ergometer (ergometer), and to study the physiological conditions of persons who are conducting the exercise. The objective is to better understand the indoor rowing exercise, the ergometer, and the exercisers, in order to investigate more effective ways of conducting this exercise, to propose feasible design modifications, and to suggest broader applications of the ergometers. The ultimate goal is to promote this relatively professional excise to be accepted by more regular people, and to introduce ergometers to be adopted as family indoor excise tool. Physical experimental subjects are 9 Ilan University male students. The averaged age of the subjects is 22, the averaged height is 170.89 cm, and the averaged weight is 65.22 kg. A bluetooth ECG measuring module was used to measure the exerciser’s heart rate and to transmit the signals wirelessly to a computer to be recorded, displayed, and analyzed though an accompanied software program in real time. The results showed that, it took averaged 52.22 s for the indoor rowing exercisers to achieve recommended healthy exercise intensity (60%). The averaged heart rate for exercisers who conducted 20 min indoor rowing is 167.74 beat/min. The heart rate was used to estimate the correspondent physical energy consumption to be 161.7 kcal (8.09 kcal/min). Another experiment verified that it is feasible to use 3 minutes indoor rowing as another cardiorespiratory endurance index measurement test in addition to the standard 3 minutes step test. This research constructed an ergometer computer model with CAD software SolidWorks. The model was integrated with digital human model and various loading boundary conditions to analyze human factor problems using ergonomic software package Jack. Through computer simulation analyses, the torque of important joints and low back spinal forces for person when conducting rowing exercise in each of the four critical phases was calculated. Maximum torque occurred at hip joints in all four phases. Maximum low back spinal force didn’t exceed the safety limit. Modified design of adding a seatback to the seat could reduce some low back spinal forces, but the benefit was not obvious. The analysis comparing the joint loading, and the degree of joint comfort due to exercising joints angles of international and domestic champion athletes showed that neither less loading, nor more comfort were proved to be the reason of better performance. Fatique analysis indicated that, at least 73 s is needed for person who has rowing for 20 minutes continuously to recover from power type muscle fatique. Keywords: Human factor engineering (Ergonomics), indoor rowing, rowing ergometer, exercise intensity, cardiorespiratory endurance index, heart rate