Experimental Comfort Assessment of a T-Shirt for Roadrunner

Abstract

Ergonomic design principles can be applied to improve human interaction. In sport activities, ergonomic planning can be a key-point of development both for sportsman behaviour and for sport facilities/devices’ design, in order to reduce injuries and muscular-skeletal disease. In some sport activities, wears and shirts plays a role not only as “dress” for sport but also as “containers” for some sports’ devices like instruments, chronometers, bottle-holder and so on. In this study, we have focused our attention on long-running people (half-marathon/marathon) that usually use the running T-shirt also as a bottle holder. In this paper, a new prototype of running T-shirt has been realized and compared with the standard one. A comparative ergonomic and comfort assessment has been done. Interaction between human and T-shirt/bottle has been modelled in DELMIA® DHM environment. The video analysis and the acquisition of human joint’s angles were processed using the KINOVEA® software. The data were evaluated using the CA_Man® software. Results are related to the subjective ratings expressed by the subject s that filled a questionnaire.