Analysis of fatigue of construction workers based on electromyographic signals
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Aiming to address the fatigue issue of construction workers resulting from high-intensity physical labor, this paper proposes a fatigue analysis method based on surface electromyographic signals (sEMG), focusing on the handling operation as the research object, to explore the fatigue characteristics of construction workers' muscles and significant monitoring indices. By collecting sEMG signals under different fatigue levels, we analyze the trends of time-frequency domain indicators (root mean square value RMS, integral EMG value IEMG, median frequency MF, mean power frequency MPF, and over-zero rate ZCR). The experimental results show that with the increase of fatigue, the RMS and IEMG of brachioradialis and erector spinae increase significantly, while the MF and MPF decrease significantly, which reflects the physiological mechanism of the decrease of muscle contraction efficiency and the enhancement of neural drive. The changes in the indexes of erector spinae are more significant than those of brachioradialis due to the higher stability load and the activation characteristics of fast muscle fibers. Through the test of intergroup variability, RMS, IEMG, MF, and MPF are selected as the core indicators for fatigue monitoring. This study provides an objective, quantitative basis for labor protection in the construction industry and lays a theoretical foundation for the real-time monitoring of occupational fatigue and the optimization of work efficiency.
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