Foude Number Theory

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Development of the model The Froude number was employed in the study and is given by FROUDE number, = Centripetal force = = [46] (1) Gravity force Where is the velocity of walking, (9.81) is the acceleration due to gravity and r (radius of curvature) has been replaced by, the characteristic length (in this case, leg length). The theoretical maximal walking speed occurs at a Froude number of 1.0 and bipedal animals naturally switch from a walk to a run at Froude numbers well below one [41]. It has been found that humans change from walk to run at a Froude number close to 0.5 [45, 48-49]. Both children and adults have…show more content…
v (5) But, Force = mass () x acceleration due to gravity (g) = (6) Assuming the only force acting is the gravitational force, Power (P) required to carry the backpack = (7) Where is the mass of the backpack (8) Combining equations 4 and 8, (9) Application of the…show more content…
Moreover, there were significant differences between the estimated masses of backpacks and the ones actually carried by the students both in terms of masses and percentages of body masses (p = 0.000, t = 8.514). The students under study carried backpack of between 1 and 14 kg, which represented between 1.7 and 26.9% of the body mass. On average, male students carried backpack of 7.5% of their body masses while the female students carried 8.2% of their body masses. The calculated power of the individual has a value ranging from 106.5 Watts to 179.9 Watts as indicated by the 5th and 95th percentiles with the average power of the individual being 138.5 Watts as shown by the 50th percentile (Table 2). The model estimated backpack mass that the students should carry has a value ranging from 5 kg (10% of the body mass) to 9.1 kg (13.7% of the body mass) as indicated by the 5th and 95th percentiles respectively.

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