Thesis Defence: Design of a Six Degree of Freedom Motion Simulator for Advancing Sports Bra Comfort Research
November 21 at 12:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Muhammad Samin Hasan, supervised by Dr. Rudolf Seethaler, will defend their thesis titled “Design of a Six Degree of Freedom Motion Simulator for Advancing Sports Bra Comfort Research” in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Applied Science in Mechanical Engineering.
An abstract for Muhammad Samin Hasan’s thesis is included below.
Defences are open to all members of the campus community as well as the general public. Registration is not required for in-person defences.
Abstract
Evaluating sports bra comfort in an objective manner is challenging because it is difficult to reproduce experiments consistently with human subjects. Using a manikin with appropriate breast prostheses and a motion simulator can overcome this limitation. However, commercially available motion simulators are not optimized for reproducing the high-speed, high-acceleration torso movements seen during athletic activity. Achieving this requires a purpose-built motion simulation platform with the right combination of travel range, speed, and dynamic performance.
A Stewart platform is particularly well-suited for this task. To meet the specific demands of torso motion simulation, a custom six-degree-of-freedom, rotary-actuated Stewart platform was designed. A parametric torso motion trajectory was synthesized from motion-capture and IMU data collected in collaboration with Lululemon and the Human Motion Biomechanics Lab (HuMBL). The system was optimized from the ground up to replicate the most demanding portions of this trajectory using impedance matching, and the control system was tuned for maximum dynamic performance.
The resulting platform enables precise, repeatable reproduction of high-intensity torso motion and provides a cost-effective, high-performance solution for objective comfort testing of sports bras and other wearable systems under realistic motion conditions.
