Use of Digital Human Modeling for Estimating Physiological Workloads of Construction Tasks
Publication: Construction Research Congress 2022
ABSTRACT
Labor productivity and its influencing factors including ergonomics play a vital role in affecting the performance of construction projects. In fact, studying ergonomics and understanding the interactions among workers and their assigned tasks have shown a decrease in workers’ discomfort, a positive impact on labor productivity, a reduction in project costs, and an increase in value creation. As such, several studies have been conducted in an attempt to properly assign construction tasks and optimize the performance of crews. However, no study has yet been carried out to estimate the physiological workloads of construction tasks and match them with the corresponding workers’ capabilities. Therefore, this research study takes the initial steps and aims at using Digital Human Modeling (DHM) to model different construction activities and generate physiological task demands. Several construction activities that require various body postures and affect different body parts are selected and modeled using DHM. The ergonomic and physiological results are then recorded for each activity. The resulting physiological task demands will, in future work, become the foundation of a simulation framework targeted at enhancing the worker-task assignment process and properly mapping the modeled tasks to construction workers based on their physiological capabilities.
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Construction Research Congress 2022
Pages: 1233 - 1242
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Published online: Mar 7, 2022
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