Influence of the perturbation profile on the balance recovery threshold

22nd Congress of the European Society of Biomechanics (ESB), LYON, FRANCE, 10-/07/2016 - 13/07/2016Falls are the second leading cause of accidental death in the world. In order to better identify the potential external causes of falls many experimental studies investigate Balance Recovery (BR) thresholds, i.e. the maximal perturbation that can be withstand by subjects, under various types of balance perturbation such as tether-release, waist-pull or platform acceleration. It has been shown that the jerk, the intensity (maximal acceleration or force) and the duration has an effect on the BR threshold. However this effect has never been quantified and most of the studies which use platform or waist-pull paradigm do not well characterize the perturbation parameters (i.e. jerk, maximal intensity, duration). The objective of this study is to provide a quantified evaluation of the jerk and perturbation's intensity on 1°/ the BR threshold and 2°/ the difficulty to recover balance