Assessment of Exposure to Whole-Body Vibration of Dozer Operators Based on Postural Variability

Validating Measurement Structure of Checklist for Evaluating Ergonomics Risks in Heavy Mobile Machinery Cabs

“…In order to collect the data necessary to model and evaluate ergonomics risks in heavy mobile machinery cabs, the questionnaire was formed on the basis of previous research in the manner that the checklist proposed in [10] and was extended by the findings of surveys [3,5,6,9,[12][13][14][15]17,18,24,33,35,36], as proposed in the previous section and given in Appendix A. All 39 items were employed besides personal data and had a five-point Likert scale format.…”

“…In addition to that, the operators' working conditions imply whole-body vibration, psychosocial factors, dust, exhaust gases, noise, temperature extremes, and time pressure, while working in shifts often with prolonged working hours, which also seriously affects the health and working performance of operators [5,[11][12][13]. Additionally, there are recognized visibility issues, the limited space of the cabin, commands/levers reach issues, inadequate seat design, and cab entry/exit problems [3,5,6,[14][15][16][17][18]. Non-neutral torso positions involving flexion, lateral flexion, and/or twisting lead to muscle fatigue, spinal compression, lower back intervertebral pressure, and lumbar pain are often presented [10,19,20].…”

“…Armrest issues are diagnosed in surveys [6,9,10,35]. Vibrations are seen as an impeding factor in the literature sources [10,12,17,18]. Control and command usage is ergonomically examined in surveys such as [5,9,10,14].…”