Abstract
The main goal of this study was to detect muscle fatigue and to identify muscles vulnerable to musculoskeletal disorders by evaluating muscle activation of subjects during welding tasks. In this study, six subjects performed two different welding tasks for a total of three hours. Surface electromyography (sEMG) was used to record the muscle activation of sixteen different muscles. Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA) was then used to analyze the EMG data. In addition, a subjective fatigue assessment was conducted to draw comparisons with the RQA results. According to the RQA results, twelve of the tested muscles experienced fatigue by showing significant difference in RQA values (p-value < 0.05) between the first and last 10 minutes of the experiment. Moreover, time-to-fatigue results obtained from RQA and subjective analysis were closely correlated for seven muscle groups. This study showed that RQA can be used in ergonomic studies for evaluating muscle activation during construction tasks.
Highlights
Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) are common health problems which have tremendous impact on manual workers (Stattin & Järvholm, 2005)
This study showed that Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA) can be used in ergonomic studies for evaluating muscle activation during construction tasks
RQA was used to evaluate Surface electromyography (sEMG) non-stationary data recorded from the welding tasks
Summary
Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) are common health problems which have tremendous impact on manual workers (Stattin & Järvholm, 2005). WMSDs are believed to be caused by prolonged and repetitive work, localized muscle fatigue, tedious and short tasks (Amell & Kumar, 2001; Buckle & Devereux, 2002), as well as repeated awkward postures and handling tasks (Valero et al, 2017). Such musculoskeletal disorders can affect the lower back, shoulder, elbow, forearm, wrist, and hand (Gazzoni, 2010). One construction task which has most of the above mentioned characteristics is welding. Welders have a prevalence of supraspinatus tendinitis development, even new welders with relatively limited time on the job (Herberts et al, 1981). Torner et al (1991) found that welders experienced significantly
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