Estimation of tool-specific isolation performance of antivibration gloves

A methodology to estimate vibration isolation effectiveness of antivibration gloves as a function of handle vibration of specific tools is proposed on the basis of frequency response characteristics of the gloves. The handle vibration spectra of six different tools are synthesized in the laboratory and attenuation performances of two different gloves are characterized under tools vibration, and M- and H-spectra defined in ISO-10819 (1996). The vibration characteristics of gloves are measured using three male subjects in the laboratory under different excitation spectra. The results suggest that tool-specific vibration isolation performance of a glove cannot be derived from the standardized M- and H-spectra. Frequency responses of the gloves are thus characterized under broad-band vibration excitations of two different magnitudes, and grip and feed forces recommended in ISO-10819. The results suggest that frequency response characteristics of gloves are relatively insensitive to magnitude of vibration but strongly dependent upon visco-elastic properties of the glove materials. The mean measured frequency response characteristics are then applied to derive an estimate of tool-specific isolation effectiveness of the gloves. The estimated acceleration transmissibility characteristics of gloves are compared with the mean measured responses to demonstrate validity of the proposed methodology. From comparisons, it is concluded that the isolation effectiveness of gloves for selected tools can be effectively predicted using the proposed methodology. The deviations between the predicted and measured transmissibility values are within 8% for majority of the glove–spectra combinations, well within the intra- and inter-subject variabilities reported in different studies. The methodology proposed in this study and the results can be applied to effectively assess the antivibration performance of the gloves for specific tools, and thereby select near optimal gloves to reduce the health hazards posed by the hand-transmitted vibration.