A modal analysis of resonance during the whole-body vibration

The mechanism of resonance of a damping system of multi-degrees of freedom such as the human body and the dependence of resonance on system parameters, particularly on the damping level, are studied in terms of detailed mathematical solutions of both the whole-body vibrations and the eigen modes for a simple model. It is revealed that resonance would only occur near the eigen frequencies of neutral modes for which the complex eigen frequencies of the corresponding damping modes for the given damping level of the system have not moved far from the starting point (damping-free case) along the corresponding tracks in the plane of complex eigen frequency yet. The major resonance would occur near the eigen frequency of the neutral mode where the modulus of the characteristic function of the system has the strongest, i.e., the deepest and sharpest, local minimum. For the present model, this neutral mode is the lowest neutral mode. It is found that the resonance and eigen frequencies increase with the stiffness of muscles and decrease with the body mass, with the portion of wobbling mass in the upper body, and with the portion of upper body mass in the whole body. Both the modal analysis and the analysis of the whole-body vibration show that the phase differences among different parts of the system are still small at the unique or the lowest resonance frequency and increase dramatically only when the frequency of the vibrating source goes beyond the resonance frequency. Thus, some effects of body vibrations, e. g., internal loads, may reach their maximum not at the resonance frequency, but at a frequency somewhat higher than the resonance frequency. This may account for the fact that the frequency ranges for abdominal pain and for lumbosacral pain caused by body vibrations are not exactly the same as the frequency range for major body resonance but shifted to somewhat higher frequency ranges. It is therefore suggested that the frequency used for strength training in terms of vibrating devices should be above 20 Hz in order to avoid not only the major resonance but also the maximal internal loads.