Abstract
Chest compression is a major cause of death at accidents caused by slope failures. This study aims to propose safety requirements in terms of strength for protective equipment to save workers' lives from chest compression as a result of being buried in soil. Several sets of large scale model tests were carried out to simulate slope failures. A model chest was newly developed to directly measure the acting earth pressure during burying. The acting earth pressure to the chest finally decreased to the overburden pressure value while an impact pressure increased sharply at the beginning from hits from falling soil blocks. Therefore, the required strength must be clarified for values of impact pressure by being limited to shallow burying within a depth of 1m. In addition, two sets of critical values of pressure and strain against the chest compressions were investigated in ergonomic studies. A number of safety factors on dynamic loading were calculated, taking into account the safety code on safety harnesses, and then a value of the impact pressure at slope failures was derived. A parallel spring model was introduced to represent a human chest wearing the protective equipment. Finally, this study indicates the safety requirements in terms of strength for the chest protection equipment at shallow burying caused by small slope failures.
