1 / 5

Aim

Mechanical efficiency of two commercial lever-propulsion mechanisms for manual wheelchair locomotion. Jordon Lui, BKin; Megan K. MacGillivray, MSc; A. William Sheel, PhD; Jeswin Jeyasurya, MASc; Mahsa Sadeghi, MD; Bonita Jean Sawatzky, PhD. Aim

tymon
Download Presentation

Aim

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Mechanical efficiency of two commercial lever-propulsion mechanisms for manual wheelchair locomotion Jordon Lui, BKin; Megan K. MacGillivray, MSc; A. William Sheel, PhD; Jeswin Jeyasurya, MASc; Mahsa Sadeghi, MD; Bonita Jean Sawatzky, PhD

  2. Aim • Evaluate mechanical efficiency (ME) of 2 lever-propulsion mechanisms (torsion spring and roller clutch) for wheelchairs. • Compare ME of lever vs hand rim propulsion within same wheelchair. • Relevance • Conventional wheelchairs have hand rims for manual propulsion, which can be energetically inefficient.

  3. Method • Subjects • 10 nondisabled males. • Procedure • Performed submaximal exercise tests with both lever-propulsion mechanisms and hand rim propulsion on 2 different wheelchairs. • Measures • Cardiopulmonary parameters (O2 uptake [VO2], heart rate [HR], energy expenditure [En]). • Total external power (Pext) using drag test protocol. • ME (ratio of Pext to En).

  4. Results • No significant effect by lever-propulsion mechanism for all physiological measures. • Suggests torsion spring didn’t have physiological benefit vs roller clutch mechanism. • Both lever-propulsion mechanisms showed decreased VO2 and HR and increased ME (as function of slope) vs hand rim propulsion.

  5. Conclusion • Both lever-propulsion mechanisms tested are more mechanically efficient than conventional hand rim propulsion, especially when slopes are encountered.

More Related