Developing a Vibration-Sensing Yarn for Monitoring Hand-Transmitted Vibrations ^†

Overexposure to hand-transmitted vibrations (HTVs) is a serious concern within industries that use vibrating power tools as HTVs can lead to severe and chronic injuries to the hand-arm system, which are preventable by limiting vibration exposure. This study presents a novel vibration-sensing electronic yarn (E-yarn) that can be used to monitor HTVs at the point-of-entry of the vibrations into the hand. The construction of the vibration-sensing E-yarn is described, with the vibration-sensing E-yarns being fully characterised at each stage of the manufacturing process to understand how the manufacturing stages affect the behaviour of the embedded sensor. The results show that there is no significant difference in the sensor response at each of the three stages in the E-yarn production over a range of frequencies and amplitudes relevant to HTVs.