The influence of a human hand-arm system on the vibrational dynamic behaviour of a compliant mechanical structure

Abstract

The aim of this study is to provide an approach to predicting human influence on a compliant mechanical structure using a substructuring technique. Substructuring techniques allow us to obtain detailed information on the vibrational behaviour of an assembly of structures by characterization of each structure separately. In this manuscript, a hand-arm system is coupled with a vibrating structure using a substructuring technique. A lightweight and compliant vibrating beam is used to demonstrate the concept. To demonstrate the feasibility of accurately predicting the hand-arm systems’ influence on the beam, we selected one position and tested it using four push forces. The characteristics of the hand-arm system for each configuration were coupled with the dynamic characteristics of the beam only over a frequency range of [5; 300] Hz. For each of the four configurations, the coupling predicts the influence of the hand on the vibrational behaviour of the beam. Reliable predictions were obtained for the vibrational behaviour of the assembly. The results indicate that the substructuring approach predicted the vibrational behaviour of the hand-arm-beam assembly with less than 3% error.