Effect of Vibration Magnitude and Seated Posture on Reading Activity in Fore and AFT Vibration

A large number of passengers prefer to utilize the time while commuting from one place to other in public transport like train, car and other vehicles. Traveling time can be utilized performing many sedentary activities e.g. Reading, writing, sketching etc. Reading activity is the most preferred activity for utilization of time. Experimental study has been performed to find the effect of vibration magnitude and different posture. Six healthy subjects were exposed sinusoidal vibrations, total 28 conditions while performing reading activity: one direction: fore and aft, two magnitudes: 0.6 and 1.2 ms-2 rms (un-weighted), seven frequencies: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 Hz and two postures: vertical backrest and 30o inclined backrest. Significant effect of vibration magnitude and different posture are observed for both subjective and objective measure. Reading performance decreases with the increase vibration magnitude and with the inclined backrest conditions.