• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.36 no.11
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• pp.1105-1110
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• 2012

The spine is one of the most important skeletal joints, and it strongly affects the health of the musculoskeletal system. A normal spine has an S-shape, and it is very important to maintain this shape. Recently, spinal diseases such as low back pain have increased rapidly, especially among the elderly. Some of these diseases are caused by congenital spinal disorders and sporting and accident injuries as well as by bad postures. Improper spinal postures could generate excessive disc pressure, which is related to degeneration and pain. Therefore, in this study, we investigated the three-dimensional kinematic parameters of the thoraco-lumbar joint in several bad postures using a motion capture analysis technique. Different bad postures created a significant amount of flexion/extension, side bending, and axial rotation angle compared with neutral postures. Further study is necessary to investigate the disc pressure and ligament force due to the increase in joint rotation from the bad postures.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.153-160
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• 2017

Gait analysis has been conducted in various environments, but the biomechanics during the transition from uphill walking to downhill walking have not been reported. The purpose of this study is to investigate the knee and ankle joint kinematics and kinetics during walking on a triangle-shaped slope compared with those during level walking. Kinematic and kinetic data of eighteen participants were obtained using a force plate and motion capture system. The greater peak ankle dorsiflexion angle and moment and the peak knee extension moment were observed (p<0.05) during both uphill and downhill walking on the triangle-shaped slope. In summary, uphill walking on a triangle-shaped slope, which showed a peak knee flexion of more than $50^{\circ}$ with greater peak knee extension moment, could increase the risk of patellofemoral pain syndrome. Downhill walking on a triangle-shaped slope, which involved greater ankle dorsiflexion excursion and peak ankle dorsiflexion, could cause gastrocnemius muscle strain and Achilles tendon overuse injury.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.75-94
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• 2020

The aim of this research is to investigate free vibration of a novel five layer Timoshenko microbeam which consists of a transversely flexible porous core made of Al-foam, two graphen platelets (GPL) nanocomposite reinforced layers to enhance the mechanical behavior of the structure as well as two piezo-magneto-electric face sheets layers. This microbeam is subjected to a thermal load and resting on Pasternak's foundation. To accomplish the analysis, constitutive equations of each layer are derived by means of nonlocal strain gradient theory (NSGT) to capture size dependent effects. Then, the Hamilton's principle is employed to obtain the equations of motion for five layer Timoshenko microbeam. They are subsequently solved analytically by applying Navier's method so that discretized governing equations are determined in form of dynamic matrix giving the possibility to gain the natural frequencies of the Timoshenko microbeam. Eventually, after a validation study, the numerical results are presented to study and discuss the influences of various parameters such as nonlocal parameter, strain gradient parameter, aspect ratio, porosity, various volume fraction and distributions of graphene platelets, temperature change and elastic foundation coefficients on natural frequencies of the sandwich microbeam.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.20 no.8
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• pp.875-881
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• 2014

The redundancy resolution of the seven DOF (Degree of Freedom) upper limb exoskeleton is key to the synchronous motion between a robot and a human user. According to the seven DOF human arm model, positioning and orientating the wrist can be completed by multiple arm configurations that results in the non-unique solution to the inverse kinematics. This paper presents analysis on the kinematic and dynamic aspect of the human arm movement and its effect on the redundancy resolution of the seven DOF human arm model. The redundancy of the arm is expressed mathematically by defining the swivel angle. The final form of swivel angle can be represented as a linear combination of two different swivel angles achieved by optimizing two cost functions based on kinematic and dynamic criteria. The kinematic criterion is to maximize the projection of the longest principal axis of the manipulability ellipsoid of the human arm on the vector connecting the wrist and the virtual target on the head region. The dynamic criterion is to minimize the mechanical work done in the joint space for each of two consecutive points along the task space trajectory. The contribution of each criterion on the redundancy was verified by the post processing of experimental data collected with a motion capture system. Results indicate that the bimodal redundancy resolution approach improved the accuracy of the predicted swivel angle. Statistical testing of the dynamic constraint contribution shows that under moderate speeds and no load, the dynamic component of the human arm is not dominant, and it is enough to resolve the redundancy without dynamic constraint for the realtime application.

• Korean Journal of Applied Biomechanics
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.377-385
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• 2013

Fall is very fatal accident causes death to older people. Shoe may affect to fall. Shoe influences risk of slips, trips, and falls by altering somatosensory feedback to the foot. The purpose of this study was to investigate the analysis of non-slip shoes for older people and influence on older people's lower extremity. For this study twenty three healthy older people were recruited. Each subjects walked over slippery surfaces (COF 0.08). Four pairs of non-slip shoes (shoe A had the greatest COF, 0.23 while shoe B, C, and D had smaller COF relatively) for older people were selected and tested mechanical and biomechanical experiment. For data collection motion capture and ground reaction forces were synchronized. There were statistically significant differences for slip-displacement, coefficient of friction, braking force, propulsion force, knee range of motion and knee joint stiffness by shoes. It was concluded that shoe A was the best for non-slip function because of the lowest slip displacement, the highest braking and propulsion forces, and the highest mechanical and biomechanical coefficient of friction where as shoe B, C, D were identified as a negative effect on the knee joint than shoe A. To prevent fall and slip, older people have to take a appropriate non-slip shoes such as shoe A.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.21-27
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• 2013

Manual wheelchair propulsion can lead to pain and injuries of users due to mechanical inefficiency of wheelchair propulsion motion. The kinetic analysis of the upper limbs during manual wheelchair propulsion needs to be studied. A two dimensional inverse dynamic model of upper limbs was developed to compute the joint torque during manual wheelchair propulsion. The model was composed of three segments corresponding to upper arm, lower arm and hand. These segments connected in series by revolute joints constitute open chain mechanism in sagittal plane. The inverse dynamic method is based on Newton-Euler formalism. The model was applied to data collected in experiments. Kinematic data of upper limbs during wheelchair propulsion were obtained from three dimensional trajectories of markers collected by a motion capture system. Kinetic data as external forces applied on the hand were obtained from a dynamometer. The joint rotation angles and joint torques were computed using the inverse dynamic model. The developed model is for upper limbs biomechanics and can easily be extended to three dimensional dynamic model.

• Advances in nano research
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.215-224
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• 2023

Nonlinearity plays an important role in control systems and the application of design. For this reason, in addition to linear vibrations, nonlinear vibrations of the stepped nanobeam are also discussed in this manuscript. This study investigated the vibrations of stepped nanobeams according to Eringen's nonlocal elasticity theory. Eringen's nonlocal elasticity theory was used to capture the nanoscale effect. The nanoscale stepped Euler Bernoulli beam is considered. The equations of motion representing the motion of the beam are found by Hamilton's principle. The equations were subjected to nondimensionalization to make them independent of the dimensions and physical structure of the material. The equations of motion were found using the multi-time scale method, which is one of the approximate solution methods, perturbation methods. The first section of the series obtained from the perturbation solution represents a linear problem. The linear problem's natural frequencies are found for the simple-simple boundary condition. The second-order part of the perturbation solution is the nonlinear terms and is used as corrections to the linear problem. The system's amplitude and phase modulation equations are found in the results part of the problem. Nonlinear frequency-amplitude, and external frequency-amplitude relationships are discussed. The location of the step, the radius ratios of the steps, and the changes of the small-scale parameter of the theory were investigated and their effects on nonlinear vibrations under simple-simple boundary conditions were observed by making comparisons. The results are presented via tables and graphs. The current beam model can assist in designing and fabricating integrated such as nano-sensors and nano-actuators.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.16B no.5
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• pp.341-346
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• 2009

The motion data glove is a representative human-computer interaction tool that inputs human hand gestures to computers by measuring their motions. The motion data glove is essential equipment used for new computer technologiesincluding home automation, virtual reality, biometrics, motion capture. For its popular usage, this paper attempts to develop an inexpensive visual.type motion data glove that can be used without any special equipment. The proposed approach has the special feature; it can be developed as a low-cost one becauseof not using high-cost motion-sensing fibers that were used in the conventional approaches. That makes its easy production and popular use possible. This approach adopts a visual method that is obtained by improving conventional optic motion capture technology, instead of mechanical method using motion-sensing fibers. Compared to conventional visual methods, the proposed method has the following advantages and originalities Firstly, conventional visual methods use many cameras and equipments to reconstruct 3D pose with eliminating occlusions But the proposed method adopts a mono vision approachthat makes simple and low cost equipments possible. Secondly, conventional mono vision methods have difficulty in reconstructing 3D pose of occluded parts in images because they have weak points about occlusions. But the proposed approach can reconstruct occluded parts in images by using originally designed thin-bar-shaped optic indicators. Thirdly, many cases of conventional methods use nonlinear numerical computation image analysis algorithm, so they have inconvenience about their initialization and computation times. But the proposed method improves these inconveniences by using a closed-form image analysis algorithm that is obtained from original formulation. Fourthly, many cases of conventional closed-form algorithms use approximations in their formulations processes, so they have disadvantages of low accuracy and confined applications due to singularities. But the proposed method improves these disadvantages by original formulation techniques where a closed-form algorithm is derived by using exponential-form twist coordinates, instead of using approximations or local parameterizations such as Euler angels.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.35 no.11
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• pp.1169-1176
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• 2011

Liquid film flows are classified into waveless laminar, wavy laminar, and turbulent flows depending on the Reynolds number or the flow stability. Since the wavy motions of the film flows are so intricate and nonlinear, studies on them have largely been experimental. Most numerical approaches have been limited to the waveless flow regime. The various free surface-tracking schemes adopted for this problem were used to more accurately estimate the average film thickness, rather than to capture the unsteady wavy motion. In this study, the wavy motions in laminar wavy liquid film flows with Reynolds numbers of 200-1000 were simulated with various numerical schemes based on the volume of fluid (VOF) method for interface tracking. The results from each numerical scheme were compared with the experimental results in terms of the average film thickness, the wave velocity, and the wave amplitude.

• IE interfaces
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.100-107
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• 2010

For proper ergonomic evaluation using a digital human model simulation (DHMS) system such as $RAMSIS^{(R)}$, the postures of humanoids for designated tasks need to be predicted accurately. The present study (1) evaluated the accuracy of driving postures of humanoids predicted by RAMSIS, (2) proposed a method to improve its accuracy, and (3) examined the effectiveness of the proposed method. The driving postures of 12 participants in a seating buck were measured by a motion capture system and compared with their corresponding postures predicted by RAMSIS. Significant discrepancies ($8.7^{\circ}$ to $74.9^{\circ}$) between predicted and measured postures were observed for different body parts and driving tasks. Two methods (constraints addition and user-defined posture) were proposed and their effects on posture estimation accuracy were examined. Of the two proposed methods, the user-defined posture method was found preferred, reducing posture estimation errors by 11.5% to 84.9%. Both the posture prediction accuracy assessment protocol and user-defined posture method would be of use for practitioners to improve the accuracy of predicted postures of humanoids in virtual environments.