This pilot study analyzed the loading on the medial forefoot (MF) region during walking in high-heel shoes. Eight healthy female volunteers have participated in this study with the heel height varied from 0 cm (flat), 4.5 cm (low), and 8.5 cm (high). The results showed that the load on MF increased with the heel height and the magnitude of the load could be effectively reduced by using foam inserts. Comparative studies of foams with different hardness and thicknesses showed that thicker soft foams had a significant advantage over thiner hard foams (P < 0.05) in reducing the peak pressures. An optimum condition with a thick soft insert could reduce MF pressure by 26%, impact force by 27%, and force time integral by 20% when compared to the condition without insert.
A Distributed Elevator Fault Diagnosis System (DEFDS) is developed to tackle frequent malfunctions stemming from the widespread distribution and aging of elevator systems. Due to the complexity of elevator fault data and the subtlety of fault characteristics, traditional methods such as visual inspections and basic operational tests fall short in detecting early signs of mechanical wear and electrical issues. These conventional techniques often fail to recognize subtle fault characteristics, necessitating more advanced diagnostic tools. In response, this paper introduces a Principal Component Analysis–Long Short-Term Memory (PCA-LSTM) method for fault diagnosis. The distributed system decentralizes the fault diagnosis process to individual elevator units, utilizing PCA’s feature selection capabilities in high-dimensional spaces to extract and reduce the dimensionality of fault features. Subsequently, the LSTM model is employed for fault prediction. Elevator models within the system exchange data to refine and optimize a global prediction model. The efficacy of this approach is substantiated through empirical validation with actual data, achieving an accuracy rate of 90% and thereby confirming the method’s effectiveness in facilitating distributed elevator fault diagnosis.