Sharif Digital Repository

Assessment of respiratory volume is widely used in clinical application in order to assess the case of respiratory illness, and the progression of the respiratory syndrome. Respiratory plethysmography is used to determine the changes of chest volume to monitor the breathing. A wearable respiration measuring system has been introduced for detection of volume variations of chest. The system consists of a flexible sensor, stretchable cloth and electrical board. The flexible sensor, whose electrical voltage is produced by body movements, is installed inside the shirt and closely contacts the chest. The low frequency components of body movements recorded by the sensor are mainly generated by... 

The human being in the environments of modern technology has to endure stresses of many and varied kinds of vibrations. Measuring vibration is an important tool in rehabilitation and biomechanical fields of research. We have proposed image processing as a new method to record and determine the frequency response of human body. The subjects were exposed to whole body periodical vibration while standing on a shaking table. Two digital camcorders were used to capture the motion of colored pencil-dot markers on the skin of human body (forehead) and on the edge of the shaking table. After color spotting each frame, the binary image results were processed using new circle factor criteria proposed... 

The most prevalent musculoskeletal condition and one of the most disabilities are caused by low back pain. In the low back pain, a large variety of evaluation tools is presented to assess the results of the treatment; therefore, it is important to measure the trunk angle in order to determine the progress during patient's treatment. In this project, we developed a low cost prototype system for flexion-extension movement to measure the angle of the trunk in sagital plane. The system consists of clothing that is stretchable; a Rubbery Ruler sensor (RRs) attached on clothing, data acquisition system. Inertial Magnetic Unit (IMU) sensor installed on spine is used to calibrate the orientation for... 

The change of gait pattern and muscular activity following amputation is thought to be responsible for the higher incidence of joint degenerative disorders observed in amputees. Considering the lack of consistent data in the literature, the purpose of the present study was to measure and analyze the spatio-temporal variables, the kinematics and, particularly, the net joint moments of the intact and prosthetic limbs of above knee amputee subjects during walking and to compare the results with those of normals. The gait characteristics of five transfemoral amputees and five normal subjects were measured using videography and a force platform. The human body was modeled as a 2-D sagittal plane... 

In this paper, the optimum alkali activator solution properties in alkali-activated pastes based on ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) and micro-silica (MS) were investigated. For this purpose, sodium hydroxide (NH) solutions with molarities of 8 M, 12 M, and 16 M were prepared and mixed with sodium silicate (NS) solutions at NS:NH ratios of 1.0, 2.5, and 4.0 to produce the final activator solution. Two sets of pastes were manufactured: (1) pastes based on GGBFS, and (2) pastes in which 10% by weight of GGBFS was replaced with MS. The fresh density increased with increasing NH molarity and NS:NH ratio; whereas, the final setting time reduced with an increase in the aforementioned... 

In this study, the prediction of flow stress in 304 stainless steel using artificial neural networks (ANN) has been investigated. Experimental data earlier deduced-by [S. Venugopal et al., Optimization of cold and warm workability in 304 stainless steel using instability maps, Metall. Trans. A 27A (1996) 126-199]-were collected to obtain training and test data. Temperature, strain-rate and strain were used as input layer, while the output was flow stress. The back propagation learning algorithm with three different variants and logistic sigmoid transfer function were used in the network. The results of this investigation shows that the R2 values for the test and training data set are about... 

Background: Most dentists complain of musculoskeletal disorders which can be caused by prolonged static posture lack of suitable rest and other physical and psychological problems. Objective: We evaluated a chair with a new ergonomic design which incorporated forward leaning chest and arm supports. Methods: The chair was evaluated in the laboratory during task simulation and EMG analysis on 12 students and subjectively assessed by 30 professional dentists using an 18-item questionnaire. EMG activity of right and left trapezius muscles for 12 male students with no musculoskeletal disorders was measured while simulating common tasks like working on the teeth of the lower jaw. Results:... 

Realistic simulation of tool-tissue interactions can help to develop more effective surgical training systems and simulators. This study uses a finite element and meshless modeling approach to simulate the grasping procedure of a large intra-abdominal organ, i.e. a kidney, during laparoscopic surgery. Results indicate that the accuracy of the meshless method is comparable with that of the finite element method, with root mean square errors in the range of 0.8 to 2.3 mm in different directions. For the model presented in this study, the computational cost of the meshless method was much less than that of the finite element model  

Sit to stand (STS) task requires variability of all body segments to achieve the stability of the important control variables (i.e., center of mass (CM) and head positions). In this study, the possible differences in the variability patterns of various body segments were investigated between 11 chronic low back pain (LBP) and 12 control subjects during STS task through two types of variability analyses; first by calculating the variability of seven limb angles, CM and head positions across 15 trials and second by principal component analysis (PCA) of seven limb angles. Participants performed the task at 3 postural difficulty levels: rigid surface, open eyes (RO), rigid surface, close eyes... 

Sit-to-stand (STS) is an important functional task affected by low back pain (LBP). It requires fundamental coordination among all segments of the body to control important performance variables such as body's center of mass (CM) and head positions. This study was conducted to determine whether LBPs could coordinate their multiple joints to achieve the task stability to the same extent as healthy controls. About 11 non-specific chronic LBP and 12 healthy control subjects performed STS task at three postural difficulty levels: rigid surface - open eyes (RO), rigid surface - closed eyes (RC) and narrow surface - closed eyes (NC). Motion variability of seven body segments, CM and head positions... 

Evaluation of spinal range of motions (RoMs) and movement coordination between its segments (thorax, lumbar, and pelvis) has clinical and biomechanical implications. Previous studies have not recorded three-dimensional primary/coupled motions of all spinal segments simultaneously. Moreover, magnitude/direction of the coupled motions of the thorax/pelvis in standing posture and lumbopelvic rhythms in the frontal/transverse planes have not been investigated. This study, hence, used an inertial tracking device to measure T1, T5, T12, total (T1-T12) thoracic, lower (T5-T12) and upper (T1-T5) thoracic, lumbar (T12-S1), and pelvis primary and coupled RoMs as well as their movement coordination in... 

In the shoulder disease, a large various tools is employed to assess the results of the treatment. In this work, a new system is proposed to record abduction-adduction movement of human shoulder. The system consists of a cloth that is stretchable, two Rubbery Ruler sensors (RRs) that attached on humerus of both arms and a data acquisition system. Two Xsens sensors attached on humerus of both arms are used to calibrate the orientation for the RRs output. Moreover, we developed a low cost prototype system to measure the rotation of Yaw from 30 to 90 degrees  

Purpose - the purpose of this study is the measuring of the human movement using printed wearable sensor. Human movement measurement is one of the usages for wearable sensors. This technology assists the researchers to collect data from the daily activities of individuals. In other words, the kinematics data of human motion will be extracted from this data and implemented in biomechanical aspects. Design/methodology/approach - This study presents an innovative printed wearable sensor which can be used for measuring human movement orientations. In this paper, the manufacturing process, implementation, measurement setup and calibration procedure of this new sensor will be explained, and the... 

Wearable system is a proper solution for rehabilitation and instrumentation applications for human daily activities. Recently, several researches are concentrated on this technology significantly because of new progress in sensors and fusion sensors. In the near future, wearable and ambulatory devices will be used considerably in biomedical applications. In this study, we reviewed some methods about wearable measuring system then introduced and designed innovative wearable clothing for this purpose. Some specifications and advantages of our system in comparison with relevant researches are; using painted sensors that are manufactured through nano electro active polymer technology, low... 

The complexity associated with musculoskeletal modeling, simulation, and neural control of the human spine is a challenging problem in the field of biomechanics. This paper presents a novel method for simulation of a 3D trunk model under control of 48 muscle actuators. Central pattern generators (CPG) and artificial neural network (ANN) are used simultaneously to generate muscles activation patterns. The parameters of the ANN are updated based on a novel learning method used to address the kinetic redundancy due to presence of 48 muscles driving the trunk. We demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed method with numerical simulation of experiments involving rhythmic motion between upright... 

In this study, the optimum curing temperature and alkaline solution-to-binder (S:B) ratio of geopolymer mortars based on waste ceramic powder (WCP) were investigated. For this purpose, mixes with S:B ratios of 0.4–0.7 were prepared and cured at 60, 75, 90, and 105 °C. The density, compressive and flexural strengths were measured at 3, 7, 14, and 28 days. Higher S:B ratios enhanced the flow of the fresh mortar. The optimum mortar was obtained for S:B ratio of 0.6 and curing temperature of 90 °C. The SEM analysis revealed that the optimal mix had a dense matrix with minimum pores. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd