Abstract
Occupational noise still remains one of the most prevalent occupational health and safety problems. Hearing protectors are very important in providing proper protection for workers’ hearing ability in noisy working environments. The protection efficiency of wearing hearing protectors such as earplug depends heavily on whether it is fitting inner the ear. Three-dimensional (3D) surface anthropometry enables us to collect key dimensions to fit between ear canal and earplug. However, few studies explore the relationship between hearing protectors and 3D canal data. Therefore, this study employs an ear impression injection and 3D scanning of ear impression to measure the external auditory canal size of Taiwanese adult, and find the key dimensions of EAC to provides a reference for hear protecting earplug design. 220 ear canal impressions were taken from both side ears of 110 adults. The portable 3D Camera was used to collect 3D auditory canal data from the ear impression models. The results of the study show that the key dimensions of external auditory canal for hearing protection are the length, width, depth of cavum concha, the ear aperture length and width, the canal isthmus, and the length of from ear aperture to first bend and second bend. In addition, we find the differences in ear canal size between men and women. The results of this study can give references for designing and choosing earplugs, achieve the objective of hearing protection for workers.
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Chiou, W.K., Huang, D.H., Chen, B.H. (2016). Anthropometric Measurements of the External Auditory Canal for Hearing Protection Earplug. In: Arezes, P. (eds) Advances in Safety Management and Human Factors. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 491. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41929-9_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41929-9_16
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