Date of Defense

4-12-1994

Department

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

First Advisor

Dr. Bob White

Second Advisor

Dr. Robert Wygant

Third Advisor

Dr. Liwana Bringelson

Abstract

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) is a cumulative trauma disorder of the wrist that affects people who perform repetitive tasks with their hands. The human wrist is designed to take stress and absorb shock, but if the wrist is repeatedly stressed throughout the course of a day, it may not be able to fully heal overnight. If the wrist continues to be damaged a little at a time over a long time period, then a cumulative trauma disorder like CTS may result. CTS commonly causes numbness of the fingers, pain in the hand or arm and, in the severe stages, a loss of hand strength. Because this debilitating condition threatens many workers, it has become a major concern of industry.

To learn more about the relationship between hand position and wrist stress, an experiment was conducted on 10 subjects to determine how rotational hand motions affect wrist stress levels. For this experiment wrist stress was defined as the amount of electrical activity in the forearm flexor muscles that control the fingers. The relationship between wrist stress and wrist bearing was explored using statistical regression and sample comparison techniques, but the results were inconclusive. It appears that the activity of the forearm flexor muscles increases as the rotational velocity of the wrist increases, but this relationship could not be positively confirmed due to errors in the data.

Access Setting

Honors Thesis-Campus Only

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