Abstract
When developing new handheld products, engineers must consider ergonomics to increase the human-product performance, comfort, and lower the risk of cumulative trauma disorders. Extensive knowledge and lack of computer aided design software in terms of hand ergonomics prevents the improvement of handheld product ergonomics. The main research topic is therefore prehensile hand grasp with a handheld object. The nature of the human hand has prevented direct measurements of stresses, strains, forces, and contact pressure on the hand during movement and grasping. Therefore, several researchers tried to develop a feasible digital human hand model for hand biomechanics and product ergonomics. In this paper we present a viable method to determine realistic human hand movement and use this data to drive the developed finite element hand model for usage in hand biomechanics and product ergonomics. The model geometry has been acquired using medical imaging and appropriate numerical model definition inside finite element software has been defined. Grasping techniques and hand movement were then recorded using motion capture system and were input into the model. Based on numerical tests, the model has proven to be numerically feasible and stable. It shows reasonable biomechanical behaviour of movement and soft tissue deformation and corresponds well with experiments of contact area and pressure measurement and tendon/muscle force.
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the project (Development of a computational human hand model for ergonomic product design, Project ID: Z2-8185) was financially supported by the Slovenian Research Agency.
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Harih, G., Tada, M. (2019). Grasping Simulations Using Finite Element Digital Human Hand Model. In: Bagnara, S., Tartaglia, R., Albolino, S., Alexander, T., Fujita, Y. (eds) Proceedings of the 20th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA 2018). IEA 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 822. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96077-7_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96077-7_13
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