The Effects of Handle Shape and Size on Exerted Forces

Abstract

This research empirically evaluated the effects of handle shape and size on the hand's ability to resist or exert force in six directions. Thirty-six handles of four sizes and nine shapes were tested for maximum force exertion by male and female subjects. The results show that subjects were able to generate higher forces with different sizes and shapes of handles, depending upon the direction of force exertion. This suggests that handles that are associated with high forces on particular directional tests are probably suited for tasks that incorporate that particular type of force or movement; they may not be appropriate for other tasks that do not incorporate such movement.

The Effect of Wok Size and Handle Angle on the Maximum Acceptable Weights of Wok Flipping by Male Cooks

“…From then on, bent handle designs have been widely used in hand tools. As mentioned by Leamon and Dempsey 5) , bent-handled tools have been widely advocated, in ergonomics literature, to control exposure to deviated wrist position and subsequent cumulative trauma disease [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] . After observing the flipping, behavior of cooks in Chinese kitchens, this study found that the cooks customarily used the wrist of the nondominant hand as a fulcrum, to allow them to swing the wok up and down, quickly.…”

Design and evaluation approach for increasing stability and performance of touch pens in screen handwriting tasks

“…Writing involves fine control and active movement in space. If the size of the brace is too big, it would be difficult to grip the pen in the hand easily, and writing becomes inconvenient (Cochran and Riley, 1986;Fellows and Freivalds, 1991). However, questions exist regarding the next size of a brace that could both be convenient and simultaneously achieve good quality writing.…”

Effect of handrail shape on graspability

“…Wrist and arm position have been shown to influence peak grip forces (Hazelton et al, 1975;Berme et al, 1977;Pryce, 1980;Mathiowetz et al, 1985;Amis, 1987;Savage, 1988;Chao et al, 1989;Balogun et al, 1991;Lee and Rim, 1991;O'Driscoll et al, 1992;Su et al, 1994;Lamoreaux and Hoffer, 1995;Halpern and Fernandez, 1996;Kang et al, 1996;Richards, 1997;Werremeyer and Cole, 1997;De Smet et al, 1998;LaStayo and Hartzel, 1999;Lee and Zhang, 2004). These references and others (Cochran and Riley, 1986;Cochran et al, 2007) address the influence of aspects of the shape and size of the grasped object on grasping force.…”