This study aims to provide joint angles of comfort for females, based on the psychophysical scaling method. Ten female subjects participated in the experiment for measuring perceived discomfort for varying joint motions. The subjects were instructed t...
This study aims to provide joint angles of comfort for females, based on the psychophysical scaling method. Ten female subjects participated in the experiment for measuring perceived discomfort for varying joint motions. The subjects were instructed to maintain given joint motions for a minute, and to rate their perceived discomfort for the motions during a minute's rest by using the free modulus method of the magnitude estimation. Joint angles of comfort were calculated from the regression equations based on the experimental results, in which levels of joint motions were used as independent variables and perceived discomforts as dependent variables. The results showed that joint angles of comfort for the joint motions investigated were much smaller than full range of motions for corresponding joint motions. The ratios of joint angle of comfort to its range motion for the hip were found to be smallest of all joint motions dealt with in this study, and those for the neck were the largest. In addition, comfortable joint angles for females were much smaller than those for males. It is recommended that when designing or evaluating workplaces ergonomically, different comfortable joint angles should be applied according to workers' or population's gender.