Abstract: Due to the discomfort sensation of human skin in previous friction experiments is difficult to evaluate quantitatively, the human skin tribological tests are carried out on an UMT-II multi-specimen test system in present study. The volunteers’ physiological signals (skin temperature, conductance and electroencephalogram) are collected by using a physiological feedback system NeXus-10. Corresponding discomfort sensations of pain, drag and heat emerging in the test are recorded by scoring. The correlation between the physiological indices and subjective sensation is analyzed, and a model equation, based on the partial least-squares regression, is constructed with the illustration of human discomfort sensation versus physiological indices and tribological stimulus. By using the model equation, the discomfort perception during skin tribological tests can be evaluated quantitatively.

Key words: skin friction;discomfort perception;partial least-squares regression;quantitative evaluation