Design of Ergo Friendly Sickle for Population of Bastar Tribal of Chhattisgarh

In India, a large amount of tribals concentrated in Bastar region of Chhattisgarh. The livelihood of tribal are mainly depended on forest produces followed by Badi cultivation. To perform the shredding of trees and harvesting of crop like paddy and wheat etc women prefer traditional sickles. It was learnt that traditional tools including sickles are injury prone and uncomfortable during crop harvesting. To provide the better comfort and safety, the design of 12 different local sickles with 12 selected subjects were investigated during harvesting of paddy and wheat crop. It observed that the blade geometry contributes significantly to measured physiological parameter therefore the blade geometry is optimized. The anthropometric data of selected subject were collected and incorporated in design of the sickle and handle, particularly. The handle length was designed considering 95th percentile value of hand breadth cross the thumb i. e.12.6 cm and handle diameter 5th percentile value of inside grip diameter i. e.3.2 cm. Physiological assessment with sickle stated that the average heart rate was 114 bpm whereas energy expenditure rate found to be 9.40 kJ/min with 0.6198 l/min oxygen consumption rate. The performance of the newly designed sickles covers 20.5 m2 /h which is more than the traditional sickle. It also reduced the cost of harvesting and reduction in farm labours by 47 % and 20 % respectively. It is concluded that the new design of sickle is suitable for the Bastar tribals and reduced injury and drudgery.