Cartographie de la sensibilité cutanée du conduit auditif humain

Abstract

Noise-induced hearing loss is responsible for almost two-third of the occupational disease files accepted in Québec. Intra-aural hearing protections is not often worn or isused by the workers because they consider them as uncomfortable. Hence, the real attenuation decreases. An intra-aural hearing protector exerts static mechanical pressure on the wall of the human ear canal. This pressure, which is the biomechanical dimension of comfort, has not been investigated throughly in the literature. For this reason, this project focuses on the implementation of an experimental device aiming at defining a map of the mechanical dermal sensitivity of the human ear canal related to the static mechanical pressure. The design of this experimental device relies on the hypothesis that it is possible to identify dermal regions in the human ear canal which are more sensitive to static mechanical pressure than others. In addition it is assumed that the the most sensitive dermal regions of the ear canal are responsible for the perceived discomfort. The device designed during the project consists of a hydraulic injection system enabling the inflation of blisters located on the surface of an instrumented probe earplug, custom made for each participant. The blisters are inflated individually by means of the hydraulic injection system, which allows for the testing of different regions of the ear canal. The participants operate the water injection in the tested blister in order to reach a pressure level relating to their mechanical dermal sensitivity. The inflation pressure of each blister is measured with pressure sensors. The obtained results showed that it is possible to identify dermal regions more sensitive than others in the ear canal. The developed system provides preliminary results that are promising for future research work on the design of more comfortable intra-aural hearing protection devices.

Date	25 Oct 2018
Original language	French
Awarding Institution	École de technologie supérieure
Supervisor	Jérémie Voix (Supervisor)