Physical Effects Research Branch, Health Effects Laboratory Division, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Morgantown, WV, USA.
Proc Inst Mech Eng H. 2023 Jul;237(7):890-904. doi: 10.1177/09544119231181246. Epub 2023 Jun 22.
It has been hypothesized that the biodynamic responses of the human finger tissues to vibration are among the major stimuli that cause vibration health effects. Furthermore, the finger contact pressure can alter these effects. It is difficult to test these hypotheses using human subjects or existing animal models. The objective of this study was to develop a new rat-tail vibration model to investigate the combined effects of vibration and contact pressure and to identify their relationships with the biodynamic responses. Physically, the new exposure system was developed by adding a loading device to an existing rat-tail model. An analytical model of the rat-tail exposure system was proposed and used to formulate the methods for quantifying the biodynamic responses. A series of tests with six tails dissected from rat cadavers were conducted to test and evaluate the new model. The experimental and modeling results demonstrate that the new model behaves as predicted. Unlike the previous model, the vibration strain and stress of the rat tail does not depend primarily on the vibration response of the tail itself but on that of the loading device. This makes it possible to quantify and control the biodynamic responses conveniently and reliably by measuring the loading device response. This study also identified the basic characteristics of the tail biodynamic responses in the exposure system, which can be used to help design the experiments for studying vibration biological effects.
有人假设，人体手指组织对振动的动力反应是引起振动健康影响的主要刺激因素之一。此外，手指接触压力可以改变这些影响。使用人体受试者或现有的动物模型来检验这些假设是很困难的。本研究的目的是开发一种新的大鼠尾巴振动模型，以研究振动和接触压力的综合效应，并确定它们与动力反应的关系。从物理上讲，新的暴露系统是通过在现有的大鼠尾巴模型上添加一个加载装置来开发的。提出了大鼠尾巴暴露系统的分析模型，并用于制定量化动力反应的方法。对从大鼠尸体上解剖的六条尾巴进行了一系列测试，以检验和评估新模型。实验和建模结果表明，新模型的行为符合预期。与以前的模型不同，大鼠尾巴的振动应变和应力主要不取决于尾巴本身的振动响应，而是取决于加载装置的振动响应。这使得通过测量加载装置的响应来方便、可靠地量化和控制动力反应成为可能。本研究还确定了暴露系统中尾巴动力反应的基本特征，这可用于帮助设计研究振动生物学效应的实验。
