Vibration and comfort: vertical and lateral motion in the range 0·5 to 5·0 Hz

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Abstract
Three experiments have been conducted to determine the effects of the frequency of whole-body vibration on comfort in the range 0·5–5·0 Hz. With vertical sinusoidal vibration the responses of 40 subjects (20 males and 20 females) were determined at two vibration magnitudes for each of the 11 preferred third-octave centre frequencies from 0·5ndash;5·0Hz. The responses of a subgroup of 10 male subjects to octave bands of vertical random vibration centred on 0·5,10, 2·0 and 40 Hz were determined in the second experiment. Twenty male subjects participated in the third experiment with lateral sinusoidal vibration in the 0·5–5·0 Hz range. The results have been compared with the findings of earlier experiments and the current International Standard. It is concluded that with vertical motion there were small differences between the responses of male and female subjects. There was little effect of vibration magnitude on the frequency dependence of vibration discomfort. Random vibration produced slightly greater discomfort than sinusoidal vibration but with the same frequency dependence. The findings are broadly compatible with the results of previous experimental studies but, for the vertical axis, differ from the frequency dependency given in the International Standard. A simple alternative frequency dependency based on the present data combined with earlier findings is defined for predicting the discomfort of vertical vibration in the range 0·5–100 Hz.