Development of a Tamping Rammer for Decreasing the Risk of Hand-Arm Vibration Syndrome

Abstract

Symptoms of a hand-arm vibration syndrome are caused by long-term use of hand-held vibrating tools, such as rock drills, impact drills and tamping rammers, and by excessive exposure to hand-arm vibrations. The purpose of this study is to develop a very low-vibrational tool using self-synchronization phenomena in order to decrease the risk of the hand-arm vibration syndrome. In the previous study, a prototype typing rammer based on an impact model with four oscillators has been developed. It was confirmed that the synchronous vibration which is able to achieve a good balance between vibration control of handgrips and the excitation of impact plates can be generated. In this study, an attempt was made to redesign the prototype with high power DC motors in order to improve the compacting performance and the vibration reduction more than ever. The sand compaction tests for measuring the daily vibration exposure values and the impact forces are conducted to estimate the performance of the optimized apparatus.