Date of Award

3-24-2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Systems Engineering

Department

Department of Systems Engineering and Management

First Advisor

Jeffrey C. Parr, PhD

Abstract

The use of Helmet Mounted Displays is ubiquitous in the field of aviation, adding operational capability, increasing head-supported weight and potential neck injury risk. Developing neck injury criteria to evaluate and quantify neck injury is important to ensure ejection systems are produced within acceptable standards. An ATD to human transfer function is developed that quantifies the difference between ATD and human neck response from -Gx accelerative tests, and demonstrates how this function can be applied to ATD test data to make previously developed human risk functions directly applicable to interpreting ATD data with a human based neck injury criterion. A difference between the human and ATD MANIC(Gx) neck response was measurable, the ATD indicated lower MANIC(Gx) levels at equivalent AIS risk probabilities. For instance, at 5% probability of neck injury risk, the ATD MANIC(Gx) (for AIS 2+ and AIS 3+ probability of injury) values were 0.29 and 0.364 respectively where the human values at the same injury percentage was 0.56 and 0.72. The associated injury criteria can be directly applied to ATD safety testing of aircraft ejection or vehicles systems in -Gx accelerative loading to directly translate ATD neck load results to the probability of human injury.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-ENV-MS-16-M-194

DTIC Accession Number

AD1054135

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