The definition of methods and tools for the evaluation of workers’ perceived comfort during work activities is an “open” problem yet. Many researchers have dealt with it in the last twenty years, focusing their efforts overall on the Automotive sector (drive and passenger comfort) and in VDT workstation comfort. In last years a great interest has been shown about Students Ergonomics and Comfort in Secondary School and Universities, in order to go beyond the UNI-EN regulations and understand how practically improve the perceived comfort of students during their lessons. This paper deals with the analysis of a Student classroom combo-desks (desk + chair) at University of Salerno, whose critical processing is following and take notes during lessons. The aim is to analyze the acquired postures during a 5-hours lessons cycle for whom that have many problems in their work: a couple of paired students that are right-handed and left-handed person. Target of the work is to ensure the student to carry out their activities with less incongruous and incorrect positions in a simple and economic way. Methods used for evaluating the risk of biomechanical overload, were the Strain Index to identify the most critical and risky working phase, the OCRA checklist to evaluate both the total risk level of the total repetitive cycle of work and a virtual-postural analysis to evaluate the perceived discomfort. In the last type of analysis the workstation was virtually modelled with DELMIA® software and postural analysis has been done with not invasive methods thanks to the use of cameras and videocameras to record the activities and to identify postures’ angles of repetitive actions. The comfort indexes were calculated using the software developed by the researchers of the Department of Industrial Engineering in Salerno: CaMAN®. Those Comfort indexes were analyzed and used to make corrections of postures and to redesign the analyzed student classroom combo-desks in order to improve ergonomics and perceived comfort.
ERGONOMIC ANALYSIS AND COMFORT DRIVEN REDESIGN OF STUDENT CLASSROOM COMBO DESKS AT UNIVERSITY OF SALERNO-ITALY
NADDEO, ALESSANDRO;VALLONE, MARIAROSARIA;FASULO, LUISA
2015-01-01
Abstract
The definition of methods and tools for the evaluation of workers’ perceived comfort during work activities is an “open” problem yet. Many researchers have dealt with it in the last twenty years, focusing their efforts overall on the Automotive sector (drive and passenger comfort) and in VDT workstation comfort. In last years a great interest has been shown about Students Ergonomics and Comfort in Secondary School and Universities, in order to go beyond the UNI-EN regulations and understand how practically improve the perceived comfort of students during their lessons. This paper deals with the analysis of a Student classroom combo-desks (desk + chair) at University of Salerno, whose critical processing is following and take notes during lessons. The aim is to analyze the acquired postures during a 5-hours lessons cycle for whom that have many problems in their work: a couple of paired students that are right-handed and left-handed person. Target of the work is to ensure the student to carry out their activities with less incongruous and incorrect positions in a simple and economic way. Methods used for evaluating the risk of biomechanical overload, were the Strain Index to identify the most critical and risky working phase, the OCRA checklist to evaluate both the total risk level of the total repetitive cycle of work and a virtual-postural analysis to evaluate the perceived discomfort. In the last type of analysis the workstation was virtually modelled with DELMIA® software and postural analysis has been done with not invasive methods thanks to the use of cameras and videocameras to record the activities and to identify postures’ angles of repetitive actions. The comfort indexes were calculated using the software developed by the researchers of the Department of Industrial Engineering in Salerno: CaMAN®. Those Comfort indexes were analyzed and used to make corrections of postures and to redesign the analyzed student classroom combo-desks in order to improve ergonomics and perceived comfort.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
