Surface electromyography as a tool to assess the responses of car passengers to lateral accelerations. Part II: Objective comparison of vehicles

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to objectively assess the response of car passengers to lateral accelerations. Surface EMG signals were collected bilaterally from the cervical erector spinae (CES), latissimus dorsi (LD), erector spinae (ES), external oblique (EO), and vastus lateralis (VL) muscles of 10 subjects. Lateral acceleration was also recorded. Three chassis-seat configurations AA, BA and BB were tested, with the first letter denoting the chassis and the second the seat. SEMG signals were often contaminated by noise, and were, therefore, denoised using the methods explained in part I. Reciprocal phasic activity was observed for all muscles except for the EO, and the reaction of passengers to lateral accelerations was interpreted as a bust torsion. The RMS of EMG segments was used as an indication of muscle activity. Muscle activation of VL and ES were significantly affected by the configuration tested (p < 0.05), with greater activation levels observed for the chassis A than for the chassis B. Such a finding implies that greater roll requires greater muscle activity, thus resulting in less comfortable vehicles. Therefore, SEMG can be used to provide an objective measure of discomfort in passengers subjected to lateral accelerations in a car seat.