Browsing by Author "Park, Jangho"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    Assessing the Effects of Exoskeleton Use on Balance and Postural Stability
    Park, Jangho (Virginia Tech, 2021-09-30)
    There is emerging evidence for the potential of occupational back-support exoskeletons (BSEs) to reduce physical demands, and thereby help control/prevent the risk of overexertion injuries associated with manual material handling. However, it is important to understand whether BSEs also introduce any unintended safety challenges. One potential risk associated with BSE use is increased risk of falls, since their extra weight, rigid structure, and external hip extension torque may increase demands on the postural control system. However, there is currently limited evidence on whether, and to what extent, BSE use alters postural stability and/or fall risk. The primary goal of this work was to understand the effects of exoskeleton use, and quantify the effects of exoskeleton design parameters, on balance and postural stability, with a focus on passive BSEs used for repetitive lifting work. A comprehensive evaluation of BSE use was performed under controlled laboratory conditions, focusing on three classes of human activity that form the basis of maintaining postural balance in diverse real-life scenarios: maintenance of a specified posture, voluntary movement, and reaction to an external perturbation. The first study demonstrated that during quiet bipedal stance, BSE use increased median frequency and velocity of the center of pressure in the anterior-posterior direction. In the second study on level walking, BSE use caused an increase in gait step width and gait variability, and decrease in the margin of stability. BSE use with high supportive torque led to adapted gait patterns in early-stance phase. Hip range of motion and peak hip flexion velocity also decreased, and participants exhibited different strategies to increase mechanical energy for propelling the leg in late-stance phase: these effects increased with increasing torque applied by the exoskeleton. In the final study, BSE use did not alter the maximal lean angle from which individuals could successfully execute single step balance recovery, following a forward loss of balance. However, several recovery responses were negatively affected by BSE use, including increased reaction time, impeded hip flexion, and reduced margin of stability in the high-torque condition. This is the first systematical investigation to quantify the effects of passive BSEs with multiple supportive torque levels on balance and postural stability. While exoskeleton effects on static balance were minimal, more substantial changes in gait spatiotemporal parameters, hip joint kinematics, and dynamic margins of stability were observed in the later studies. Our results indicate that postural stability deteriorated with exoskeleton use in dynamic conditions, and provide mechanistic insight into how stability is altered by different exoskeleton design factors such as added mass, restricted range of motion, and external hip extension torque. While our results are suggestive of increased fall risk, especially in the high-torque condition, fall risk in real life is moderated by a complex combination of individual and environmental conditions. Future work should consider more complex, realistic tasks and also include a more diverse sample that is studied under longer exposure durations, to further elucidate these findings. Our characterizations of a wide variety of postural responses as a function of exoskeleton torque settings are expected to contribute to improving both design and practice guidelines to facilitate the safe adoption of BSEs in the workplace.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Efficient Global Optimization of Multidisciplinary System using Variable Fidelity Analysis and Dynamic Sampling Method
    Park, Jangho (Virginia Tech, 2019-07-22)
    Work in this dissertation is motivated by reducing the design cost at the early design stage while maintaining high design accuracy throughout all design stages. It presents four key design methods to improve the performance of Efficient Global Optimization for multidisciplinary problems. First, a fidelity-calibration method is developed and applied to lower-fidelity samples. Function values analyzed by lower fidelity analysis methods are updated to have equivalent accuracy to that of the highest fidelity samples, and these calibrated data sets are used to construct a variable-fidelity Kriging model. For the design of experiment (DOE), a dynamic sampling method is developed and includes filtering and infilling data based on mathematical criteria on the model accuracy. In the sample infilling process, multi-objective optimization for exploitation and exploration of design space is carried out. To indicate the fidelity of function analysis for additional samples in the variable-fidelity Kriging model, a dynamic fidelity indicator with the overlapping coefficient is proposed. For the multidisciplinary design problems, where multiple physics are tightly coupled with different coupling strengths, multi-response Kriging model is introduced and utilizes the method of iterative Maximum Likelihood Estimation (iMLE). Through the iMLE process, a large number of hyper-parameters in multi-response Kriging can be calculated with great accuracy and improved numerical stability. The optimization methods developed in the study are validated with analytic functions and showed considerable performance improvement. Consequentially, three practical design optimization problems of NACA0012 airfoil, Multi-element NLR 7301 airfoil, and all-moving-wingtip control surface of tailless aircraft are performed, respectively. The results are compared with those of existing methods, and it is concluded that these methods guarantee the equivalent design accuracy at computational cost reduced significantly.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Prediction of Dynamic Stability Using Mapped Chebyshev Pseudospectral Method
    Choi, Jae-Young; Im, Dong Kyun; Park, Jangho; Choi, Seongim Sarah (Hindawi, 2018-08-01)
    A mapped Chebyshev pseudospectral method is extended to solve three-dimensional unsteady flow problems. As the classical Chebyshev spectral approach can lead to numerical instabilities due to ill conditioning of the spectral matrix, the Chebyshev points are evenly redistributed over the domain by an inverse sine mapping function. The mapped Chebyshev pseudospectral method can be used as an alternative time-spectral approach that uses a Chebyshev collocation operator to approximate the time derivative terms in the unsteady flow governing equations, and the method can make general applications to both nonperiodic and periodic problems. In this study, the mapped Chebyshev pseudospectral method is employed to solve three-dimensional periodic problem to verify the spectral accuracy and computational efficiency with those of the Fourier pseudospectral method and the time-accurate method. The results show a good agreement with both of the Fourier pseudospectral method and the time-accurate method. The flow solutions also demonstrate a good agreement with the experimental data. Similar to the Fourier pseudospectral method, the mapped Chebyshev pseudospectral method approximates the unsteady flow solutions with a precise accuracy at a considerably effective computational cost compared to the conventional time-accurate method.