Development of a hand–arm mechanical analogue for evaluating chipping hammer vibration emission values

This paper reports on the development and validation of a mechanical system designed to simulate the hand–arm dynamic response when coupled with a chipping hammer. The design is based on a two-degree-of-freedom lumped parameters model, in which the parameters are optimized such that the apparent mass of the mechanical analogue provides a close fit with the measured apparent mass of the hand–arm mechanical system. The apparent mass of the mechanical analogue has been validated on an electrodynamic shaker, than it was used to evaluate the vibration emission values of two different chipping hammers. Preliminary results show variations of < 15 percent of the vibration emission values between human subjects and the hand–arm simulator for two different types of chipping hammers, while the variability in the results is found to be considerably reduced when using the mechanical analogue. The implementation of the mechanical analogue as part of a test set-up for the determination of the vibration emission values of chipping hammers is thus seen as an attractive alternative to the use of human subjects.