ASSESSING THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NUMERICAL METHODS, CAD EVALUATIONS AND REAL EXPERIMENTS FOR THE ASSESSEMENT OF REACH ENVELOPES OF THE HUMAN BODY
Year: 2015
Editor: Christian Weber, Stephan Husung, Marco CantaMESsa, Gaetano Cascini, Dorian Marjanovic, Serena Graziosi
Author: Delangle, Mathieu; Petiot, Jean-François; Poirson, Emilie
Series: ICED
Institution: Ecole Centrale de Nantes, France
Section: Design Methods and Tools - part 2
Page(s): 115-124
ISBN: 978-1-904670-69-8
ISSN: 2220-4334
Abstract
Numerical models and computer-aided modeling software are tools commonly used to assess the accessibility of an environment, based on static human body dimensions. In this paper, the limits of validity of these approaches are assessed by comparing the reach envelopes obtained by these methods to those obtained experimentally. First, the accessibility areas of forty adult subjects were evaluated by performing a task comprising 168 reach points. Second, anthropometric characteristics of participants were recorded and used to perform the reach assessment by a numerical method, and then by a CAD-based analysis. In spite of the simple nature of the presented design problem, the results show important differences between the three methods. The study shows that the CAD-based assessment provides more accurate results than the numerical model. Nevertheless, the shapes envelopes comparison indicates that the maximum reach envelopes obtained with the CAD analysis are not always consistent with those obtained experimentally, closely linked to the hand location. Results indicate that the CAD model used to obtain maximum reaches gave predictions that underestimate the reach ability.
Keywords: Reach Assessment, Experimental Trials, Computer Aided Design (CAD), Human Behaviour In Design