Modeling the biodynamic response of a pre-loaded vibrated phalanx and preliminary results for a whole hand.

Regular exposure of tool operators to hand-arm vibration can lead to various disorders and injuries due to changes of mechanical quantities like dynamic stress or strain arising from the vibration propagation. Direct biodynamic measurements inside soft tissues are complex, thereby a finite element model (FEM) was developed to assess the dynamic mechanical parameters by numerical computation. An original visco-hyperelastic constitutive law reliable for finger soft tissue was established and verified in the spectral domain up to 500 Hz. Our work aims now at exploiting this mathematical model by computing the dynamic pressure and dissipated power density for a preliminary pre-loaded, then vibrated, forefinger phalanx and by simulating the biodynamic response of a hand gripping a vibrating handle.