External Ear Shape Classification of Chinese Adults for Ergonomic Product Design

Abstract

Understanding the complex external ear shape is crucial to the ergonomic design of ear worn products such as earphones and hearing-aids. The purpose of this study is to classify the external ear shapes (including auricle, concha and external auditory canal) based on fifteen anthropometric measurements extracted from 1180 Chinese adults aged between 18 and 65. Multivariate analysis adopted in this study contains two steps. First, the principal component analysis (PCA) was performed on these ear measurements to derive the underlying components of ear shape, and nine principal components were derived. Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering (AHC) and kmeans clustering were conducted in succession, and the external ear shape was categorized into five clusters accordingly. The representative ear model for each cluster was rebuilt and relating ear measurements were presented. The results of this paper can facilitate the mass-production as well as improving the wearing comfort of ear-related products.

Keywords: ergonomics design, ear shape classification, 3d scanning, ear worn products, external acoustic meatus

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1001928