Experimental Study to Investigate the Effect of Whole-body Vibration Using Steering Entropy as a Function of Drowsiness

Abstract

Although there are many researches available on the characterization of the effects of whole-body vibration on seated occupants’ comfort, however, drowsiness induced by vibration has received less attention to date. There are also less validated measurement methods available to quantify whole body vibration-induced drowsiness in vehicle occupants. Here, twenty male volunteers were recruited for this experiment. Experiment procedures comprised of two 10-minutes simulated driving sessions under no-vibration conditions and under vibration that were randomly organized. Gaussian random vibration, with 1-15 Hz frequency bandwidth at 0.2 ms2 r.m.s. for 30-minutes was used. As mentioned in the previous section, the selection of vibration amplitude of 0.2 ms2 r.m.s is to ensure that the amplitude level is away from the discomfort acceleration value, which is 0.315 ms2 r.m.s. During the driving session, volunteers were required to obey the speed limit of 100 kph and maintain a steady position in the left-hand lane. A deviation in steering angle was recorded and analyzed. Significant evidence of driving impairment following 30-minutes of exposure to vibration was found in all volunteers (p < 0.01) that was also linked to drowsiness. faced by tax authorities in improving the tax compliance level.