The effects of vibration frequency and direction on the location of areas of discomfort caused by whole-body vibration.

Although much research has been devoted to the determination of equivalent comfort contours for human response to whole-body vibration little consideration has been given to the source of the feelings that give rise to such comfort contours. This paper shows that for vertical vibration there is a distinct difference in the locations of discomfort on the body at different frequencies and that the locations are not much affected by the vibration level. For horizontal motions, feelings of discomfort predominated in the lower abdomen and buttocks irrespective of vibration frequency or direction. A semantic scaling technique indicates the maximum sensitivity to vertical vibration acceleration in the 4 to 16 Hz range, but for both fore-and aft and lateral vibration there is a decrease in sensitivity with increasing frequency above 2Hz.