Abstract
The frequency of fall accidents is one of the most serious problems in construction industries, and the countermeasures, such as guidelines or regulation, etc., for falls from scaffolds have been tightened in Japan. These countermeasures particularly affect the decrease in the number of the fatal accidents by falls from scaffolds. However, the rate of such accidents from falls is still high in the construction industries. In order to reduce the falls, the scaffold sheeting, as a covering around the scaffolds to protect against falling construction materials (a method widely used in Japan), was improved for fall protection. In this study, the safety of the fall protection system by the improved sheeting and the regulation was compared by fall tests using a human dummy. Then, impact loads, which acted on the scaffolds, were measured and evaluated for the safety property. Form the results of the fall tests, it could be confirmed that the fall protection system by the improved scaffold sheeting was relieved the impact loads more than that by the Japanese regulation.
