ME303 Lab 4 Page 1

Laboratory Experiment #4
Me 303
November 14, 2013


David Novalinski

Absorption of Impulse on Different Pillows

ABSTRACT

Three types of pillows will be analyzed to figure out which is better for sleeping with respect to
comfort and impact forces. The pillows used in this experiment are Tempurpedic, down, and
polyester. The force of a 1000kg weight was measured when being dropped 1 foot above the top
of the pillow. The Tempurpedic pillow had a maximum voltage of 0.0073 V, the down pillow
had a maximum voltage of 0.0102 V, and the polyester pillow had a maximum voltage of 0.0220
V. The impact forces for the Tempurpedic pillow were lower, but also spread out over a longer
period of time. The polyester pillow had the highest voltage readings, but the duration of the
impact was also a lot shorter. This yields similar impulses for all of the pillows, but the absorbed
force turned out to be more of an important factor to determine how comfortable a pillow is in
this lab.

INTRODUCTION

In everyday life, most people have the same exact redundancies occur. They wake up, eat, go to
work or school, eat more and finally they go to bed. Its almost humorous that everybody living
this lifestyle ends each day at the same place that they start. It is especially amusing by the
engineering definition of work (force multiplied by a displacement that is path independent),
because the total work of an average person is simply zero. The average person is supposed to
get 8 hours of sleep each night to live a healthy lifestyle, which comes out to one third of their
life.

Since so much time is spent sleeping, many ways over the history of man have been created to
make sleeping more of a luxury and more comfortable. During the times of cavemen, they
would throw leaves onto the ground and sleep on that (probably), and now in more modern
times, pillows, comforters, water beds, and many more innovations have been made to make
sleeping better.

Of these new technologies, there are a few in particular that stand out. The Tempurpedic pillow
has had many infomercials claiming to be the best pillow, even arguing to be better than a
ME303 Lab 4 Page 2

memory foam pillow. Two of the more common pillows include polyester pillows, which are
the standard pillows one would find at any department store for a low price, and down pillows,
which are pillows filled with feathers.
Its important to know which type of pillow is the most comfortable pillow and will absorb the
most impulse. And impulse is defined as
(1)

where J is the impulse force (Ns), F is the force applied (N), and dt is the change in time (s).
The comfort ability of a pillow can be measured by measuring the impulse of a force. By
measuring the same force on different pillows, they can be compared and deciphered to find the
best pillow for sleeping.

In this lab, a standardized mass will be dropped onto three different types of pillows. The
impulses recorded will be compared to one another to help pick out the pillow that absorbs the
most impact of the weight.

EXPERIMENTAL METHODOLOGY

Equipment Necessary
o DC Power Supply: Hp 6236B Triple Output Power Supply
o Data Acquisition Card: National Instruments PCIe-6351 (16-bit)
o I/O Connector Block: National Instruments SCB-68 (68 pin)
o LabView 8.6
o Load Cell
o One sheet of plexi glass
o Three types of pillows (polyester, down, and Tempurpedic)
o A 1000 kg weight
o A Drill Press

To get started on this lab, the three types of pillows (polyester, down, and Tempurpedic) were
acquired from friends, a store, family or anywhere else necessary. The data acquisition card and
I/O Connector Block were connected properly to the LabView program and then wired to a Load
Cell. The plexi glass chosen was large enough to properly support and balance a regular sized
pillow. Next, a quarter inch hole was drilled in the center of the glass using a drill press to place
one end of the Load Cell through. It was then screwed tight onto the glass.

Next, the pillow was placed on top of the plexi glass, with the load cell underneath. The 1000 kg
weight was measured to a standard height of one foot, and then the recording started. The
weight was dropped three times per pillow for redundancy. The trials were then output into an
excel document to be analyzed.



ME303 Lab 4 Page 3

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The hypothesis of the experiment was that Tempurpedic pillows will have the lowest peak
voltage recorded for each trial, followed by down pillows, and polyester having the highest peak
voltage. That hypothesis was solely based off of advertisements that have been observed, pricing
of the pillows, and the overall comfort that felt by touching them.

The first graph of the down pillow, in figure 1, was noteworthy. It shows the impulse and the
maximum value of the voltage that was reached. Since the weight and the height that it was
dropped from were steady from trial to trial, the only thing that needed to be accounted for was
the weight of the pillow. As seen in figure 1, the initial voltage output reading was 0.187467 V,
on average. For the first trial for the polyester pillow, the initial voltage before the impulse was
0.186099 V, on average. This shows that although the difference in output voltage is minimal,
the initial readings still are not accounted for.


Figure 1: The first trial of the impulse of a dropped weight on a down Pillow.


To properly calibrate each trial of each pillow, the graphs were first made on an overall time
range of five seconds. Then the average voltages were taken from the initial time until about a
quarter second before the impulse started, which was just a safety precaution. The average
voltage therefore accounted for the weight of the pillows in each trial and was subtracted off of
each point.

ME303 Lab 4 Page 4

The next thing to analyze from Figure 1 is not only the initial peak, but also the wavy response
directly after. This is due to the weight bouncing up off of the pillow due to the absorbed shock.
In figure 2, the graphs for the polyester pillow and Tempurpedic pillow are shown. The
Tempurpedic graph has the waviest response out of the three types, and the polyester has almost
no wave. This supports the hypothesis that the Tempurpedic absorbs the most impulse, and the
polyester absorbs the least.


(a) (b)

Figure 2: This compares the impulse and resulting waves from the Tempurpedic
pillow (a) and the polyester pillow (b).

Figure 2 also shows the calibration that was done and now the ability to form a reasonable
comparison. By taking the measurements of the maximum voltages acquired for each pillow on
each trial we got the graph in figure 3. As seen below, the Tempurpedic pillow had the lowest
peak voltage, the average being 0.0073 V after the weight of the pillow was removed. The down
pillow had an average of 0.0102 V, and the polyester pillow had an average of 0.0220 V. This
greatly proves our hypothesis that the Tempurpedic pillows are more comfortable by showing
that the same force is initially dissipated through the pillow and the peak force recorded by the
program is one third as high as the polyester pillow. For all three graphs of each pillow see the
Appendix.

ME303 Lab 4 Page 5



Figure 3: The Voltage peaks for each pillow at three different trials.

Ideally, the impulses when calculated out came out to be nearly identical. This is because the
force is the same onto each pillow, but the force is absorbed. Although the peak voltages were
different, they were just absorbed at different rates. Looking back at figure 1 and 2, or even at
the appendix, the peaks for the Tempurpedic trials were smaller, but also evaluated over a longer
time interval. For the polyester pillow, the peak is three times larger than the Tempurpedic
pillow, but the time range is just about a third as long. When applied to equation 1, they become
equal to each other.

CONCLUSION

Although the impulses of the pillows came out to be unreliable, a better way of determining the
amount of comfort a pillow supplies became obvious. By just observing the maximum voltage
peak from a constant weight dropped from a set height onto a calibrated sensor and pillow set up,
the amount of force that a pillow dissipates can be observed and compared. The Tempurpedic
pillow came out to be the most comfortable pillow by those terms because the peak voltage was
only 0.0073 V, while down pillows had a peak at 0.0102 V, and polyester pillows peaked at
0.0220 V. The waviness of the curve after the initial peak also shows how the energy from the
dropped weight is absorbed and bounced back. In the Tempurpedic graphs, the waves were
larger than the others, showing the elasticity of the pillow and its ability to absorb the dropped
weight and support it, rather than just sink in like the polyester pillow.




0
0.005
0.01
0.015
0.02
0.025
0.03
1 2 3
V
o
l
t
a
g
e

P
e
a
k

(
V
)

Trial
Down
Poly
Tempur
ME303 Lab 4 Page 6

REFERENCES

[1] Post, S. (2010) Applied and Computational Fluid Mechanics, Jones and Bartlett Publishers.

[2] "11 Surprising Health Benefits of Sleep." - Health.com. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.

APPENDIX

There are three sets of three graphs. The first set is the three trials of down pillows, followed by
the three trials of polyester pillows, and finally three trials of Tempurpedic pillows.
They have all been calibrated to incorporate the weight of the pillow, and the axis are are set up
so that the voltage values for each pillow remain constant and the time scales consist of the same
change of time. All the graphs have an overall time range of 1 second to help better visualize the
differences in width of the impulse curves.



-0.004
-0.002
-1E-18
0.002
0.004
0.006
0.008
0.01
0.012
2.25 2.45 2.65 2.85 3.05 3.25
V
o
l
t
a
g
e

(
V
)

Time (Seconds)
Down Pillow Trial 1
Voltage
-0.004
-0.002
0
0.002
0.004
0.006
0.008
0.01
0.012
3.25 3.45 3.65 3.85 4.05 4.25
V
o
l
t
a
g
e

(
V
)

Time (Seconds)
Down Pillow Trial 2
Voltage
ME303 Lab 4 Page 7




-0.004
-0.002
0
0.002
0.004
0.006
0.008
0.01
0.012
2.25 2.45 2.65 2.85 3.05 3.25
V
o
l
t
a
g
e

(
V
)

Time (Seconds)
Down Pillow Trial 3
Voltage
-0.005
-1E-17
0.005
0.01
0.015
0.02
0.025
0.03
3 3.2 3.4 3.6 3.8 4
V
o
l
t
a
g
e

(
V
)

Time (Seconds)
Polyester Pillow Trial 1
Voltage
-0.005
-1E-17
0.005
0.01
0.015
0.02
0.025
0.03
4.5 4.7 4.9 5.1 5.3 5.5
V
o
l
t
a
g
e

(
V
)

Time (Seconds)
Polyester Pillow Trial 2
Voltage
ME303 Lab 4 Page 8




-0.005
0
0.005
0.01
0.015
0.02
0.025
0.03
4 4.2 4.4 4.6 4.8 5
V
o
l
t
a
g
e

(
V
)

Time (Seconds)
Polyester Pillow Trial 3
Voltage
-0.004
-0.002
0
0.002
0.004
0.006
0.008
0.01
3.75 3.95 4.15 4.35 4.55 4.75
V
o
l
t
a
g
e

(
V
)

Time (Seconds)
Tempurpedic Pillow Trial 1
Voltage
-0.004
-0.002
-1E-17
0.002
0.004
0.006
0.008
0.01
4.25 4.45 4.65 4.85 5.05 5.25
V
o
l
t
a
g
e

(
V
)

Time (Seconds)
Tempurpedic Pillow Trial 2
Voltage
ME303 Lab 4 Page 9


-0.004
-0.002
0
0.002
0.004
0.006
0.008
0.01
2.75 2.95 3.15 3.35 3.55 3.75
V
o
l
t
a
g
e

(
V
)

Time (Seconds)
Tempurpedic Pillow Trial 3
Voltage