Whole body vibration may be hazardous to your health - it can cause lower back pain, motion sickness, bone damage, and more. Measuring vibration is an important step in understanding these potentially adverse effects.
But what are the most important considerations in making whole body vibration measurements?
It turns out, as "Mr. Resonance" illustrates to the right, different parts of the human body have different resonances. Certain vibration frequencies can be more damaging to some body parts than others. For example, vibrations between 20 Hz and 30 Hz can cause resonance between the head and shoulders with vibration amplification of up to 350%!
How do we handle this when measuring human vibration? Researchers have come up with "weightings" to account for these differences. These weightings are conveniently built in to vibration meters such as the Larson Davis HVM200.
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