An evaluation of the proposed revision of the anti-vibration glove test method defined in

Abstract

To improve the reliability of the anti-vibration (AV) glove test defined in the current standard, a revised version of the standard has been proposed. However, the revised method has not been fully tested and sufficiently evaluated, and it is unknown whether it is practically feasible and convenient to implement the standard. To help achieve the objective of the revision, the specific aims of this study are to examine the rationale behind the major revisions of the standard and to evaluate the major technical aspects of the revised method through an experiment. Five human subjects participated in the experiment for the evaluation. Fifteen gloves with anti-vibration features were used in the experiment. To help evaluate the AV glove criteria, the effects of the glove on the grip strength were also examined. While this study failed to realize the constant-velocity spectrum proposed in the original revision, the glove vibration transmissibility values measured with a new spectrum proposed in the current study were very similar to those measured with the M and H spectra defined in the current standard, which suggests the new spectrum can greatly simplify the test without changing the original test results, and it should be adopted in the further revision of the standard. The results of this study also strongly support the proposed major revisions in the instrumentation and test procedures. Coincidently, the glove that reduced the grip strength the least was also the one that reduced the most vibration, which suggests that the negative and positive effects of the glove can be balanced in its design. While the subject is identified as a major influencing factor, this study proposed a novel approach – the use of a reference glove in the test to minimize the inter-subject and inter-laboratory variations. Based on the results of this study, some other further revisions in the test procedures, evaluation methods, and AV glove criteria were also proposed and discussed. Relevance to industry Anti-vibration gloves have been used as an alternative approach to reduce hand-transmitted vibration exposure. A standard is required to conduct a reliable screening test to help select appropriate anti-vibration gloves. This study can significantly help improve the current standard on the test. The results of this study can also be directly used to help select appropriate AV gloves.