Journal des nouvelles physiothérapies

Abstrait

Development of Lower Back Bending Load Relief Mechanism using Principle of Leverage for Lifting a Heavy Object by Hand

Hideki Toda and Hajime Yamamoto

In the present paper, a lower back bending load relief mechanism using a principle of leverage for lifting a heavy object by hands was proposed and the function was evaluated. In the broad range of such as care, logistic and agriculture fields, there are many tasks required being bending the lower back for lifting a heavy object, and it has been a cause of lower back pains. Since the developed device is touched to three body points - (1) chest, (2) lower back and (3) thighs, the heavy object load firstly would get on the chest part, and the rotational movement to fall down forward would be cancelled by the thighs and the lower back parts. 100 N load lifting experiment when 30, 45, 70° with the proposed device shows that the calculated rotational torque of the lower back takes a small value (at least <2 Nm), in the case of without the proposed device, the rotational torque would take about 49 Nm. The mechanism would be useful to relive the lower back rotational load when the subject holds a heavy load by the hands.