Optimal design method with biomechanical analysis for a work environment reducing physical workload: illustration by application to work table height design

摘要

A work environment should be designed to minimise physicalworkload. We propose an optimal work environment designmethod to accomplish this, in which joint moment ratios werecalculated by biomechanical analyses through digital humanmodelling (DHM) and were used to indicate physical workload. Thework environment design problem was formulated as a multiobjectiveoptimisation problem, minimising the average andmaximum joint moment ratio values to determine the optimal workenvironment. Sequential approximate optimisation, which improvesthe accuracy of the response surface by sequentially adding newsampling points from a simulation, was applied to efficiently obtaina precise optimal solution. The proposed method was applied todesigning a work table height for light assembly tasks. This methoddetermined the optimal work table height considering theanthropometric diversity of workers from a relatively small numberof subjects. Through this case study, the validity of the proposedmethod is discussed.