Citation

Ayyar A, Laananen DH. Int. J. Crashworthiness 2001; 6(2): 263-273.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2001, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The safety of civil aircraft seats is evaluated by dynamic testing using two sets of impact conditions. For transport category aircraft seats, the potential for head injury due to impact on seat backs or bulkheads must be determined. The dynamic tests are conducted with a 50(th)-percentile Hybrid II dummy, and pass/fail criteria include the Head Injury Criterion(HIC). Computer simulations were performed to investigate the variation of HIC and neck loads with dummy size and type and for a range of seat row pitch. Another variable was the break-over resistance of the forward seat back. As expected, predicted values of HIC were higher for larger dummies at a given seat row pitch. Potentially more significant was the result that the HIC values obtained with the 50(th)-percentile Hybrid III model were generally much higher than those for the Improved Hybrid II under otherwise identical conditions, indicating the need for further investigation. Finally, for many of the cases that were modelled, neck moments and/or forces were predicted to exceed recommended tolerance levels, even when the HIC was significantly below 1000.

Language: en