Abstract
Objective: The aim of this study is to identify the problems of the current Korean Standards (KS) of student chairs and to propose a new KS based on the Korean student anthropometric data. Background: Korean students are dissatisfied with their chairs while they are studying for a long time. This is due to the problems with the size system and the dimensions of the chairs following the KS standards, which have been subject to Japanese standards and ISO standards for the long times without any verification. Therefore, it is required to propose new chair specifications considering the recent anthropometric data of Korean students. Method: This study aimed at presenting improvements only for seat height, seat depth and seat width of student chairs in KS G 2010 for student desks and chairs,. The anthropometric data of 8,011 pupils aged 7~18 years was used in this study. The ergonomic design principles for the chair dimensions were applied. To compare the current KS with the newly suggested KS proposal, the concept of accommodation ratio is proposed. Results: The current KS standards of student chairs could not accommodate a large number of students. To increase the accommodation ratio, the current seven size system was changed into the nine size system in the new proposal. Also the ergonomic principles have been applied to establish new dimensions of student chairs. As a result, the accommodation ratios of seat height, seat depth and seat width increased to 90.5%, 91.8% and 65.2% respectively. Conclusion: New standards for the student chairs based on the Korean anthropometric data were suggested. This new proposal showed great improvement in accommodation ratio of student chairs. Application: The result of this study can be applied to the establishment of new KS standards of student chairs.
