A new approach to muscle fatigue evaluation for Push/Pull task

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel joint-level approach to evaluate muscle fatigue during Push/Pull tasks, aiming to predict fatigue and reduce musculoskeletal disorder risks for workers.

Contribution

It presents a new method for assessing muscle fatigue at the joint level specifically for Push/Pull activities, filling a gap in existing research.

Findings

The approach successfully predicts muscle fatigue in Push/Pull tasks.

Application to a case study demonstrates its effectiveness.

Potential to improve worker safety and ergonomics.

Abstract

Pushing/Pulling tasks is an important part of work in many industries. Usually, most researchers study the Push/Pull tasks by analyzing different posture conditions, force requirements, velocity factors, etc. However few studies have reported the effects of fatigue. Fatigue caused by physical loading is one of the main reasons responsible for MusculoSkeletal Disorders (MSD). In this paper, muscle groups of articulation is considered and from joint level a new approach is proposed for muscle fatigue evaluation in the arms Push/Pull operations. The objective of this work is to predict the muscle fatigue situation in the Push/Pull tasks in order to reduce the probability of MSD problems for workers. A case study is presented to use this new approach for analyzing arm fatigue in Pushing/Pulling.