February 2024 Volume 6

FORGING RESEARCH

When comparing the left forearm (orange) and bicep (blue), again with the big/heavy grinding wheel, we can see that the forearm is

experiencing a lot more acceleration than the bicep, shown in Fig. 6 .

Fig. 6: Acceleration in the x, y, and z axes for the left forearm (orange) and bicep (blue) recorded via IMUs over a 35 second time span. The forearm experienced stronger vibrations from working with the tool than the bicep. n = 1.

When looking at the big, heavy grinding wheel vs the smaller, lighter grinding wheel in Fig. 7 , we can see that the bigger wheel requires

more acceleration imparted to the right bicep in this case to control.

Fig. 7: Acceleration in the x, y, and z axes for the heavy (blue) and light (orange) grinding wheels used by the participant, recorded via IMUs over a 35 second time span. Vibrations shown are for the right bicep. The larger, heavy grinder caused larger vibrations.

Conclusions The survey results imply that workers in the forging industry, regardless of how many hours they spend doing repetitive tasks per shift, experience strain or pain in their joints. Of the joints surveyed, the wrist and back were the most reported as experiencing strain or pain. We also successfully established a method of data collection in a forging environment (wireless IMUs) that can allow us to gather kinematic data from workers, laying the groundwork for future studies that can take advantage of this method.

Acknowledgements This study would not have been possible with financial support from FIERF. In addition, we are grateful to Rachelle Wagner at SIFCO for providing access to workers at their forging plant.

FIA MAGAZINE | FEBRUARY 2024 83

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