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| Injury Prevention and Restraint Technologies for Ground Vehicles and Helicopters |
Army Science and Technology Objective: IV.ME.2000.04
Problem
The Army’s tactical ground vehicles lack state-of-the-art occupant safety equipment that could significantly reduce occupant injuries and fatalities during extreme operations and accidents. Occupant flail with resultant head injury is the leading cause of serious injury and fatality in Army helicopter accidents. A potentially effective countermeasure to flail injuries is the cockpit airbag system (CABS); however, critical CABS performance and safety issues remain unanswered. Injuries to ground vehicle occupants from repeated jolt are well documented, yet Army health risk assessors lack valid injury criteria and methods to assess this risk in current and future ground vehicles.
Medical Research Solution
Use laboratory and field studies of the biomechanics of injury, and advanced biomechanical modeling techniques to correlate human injury to measured biodynamic forces acting on the body. Use these human injury correlations to develop health risk assessment methods and injury probability models for the Army medical community, and biomedically-based restraint and safety equipment design guidelines for the Army’s tactical vehicle and helicopter developers.
Products
- Biomedically based design guidelines for effective occupant protection systems for Army tactical vehicles and helicopters to improve occupant survivability in helicopter and ground vehicle accidents.
- Health risk assessment method, including an injury probability model, for the Army medical community to use in assessing the potential risk of injury from repeated jolt exposures in tactical ground vehicles.
- Biomedically based tactical ground vehicle design guidelines to guide the development of vehicles that reduce or eliminate the probability that vehicle occupants will be injured or suffer performance decrements from repeated jolt exposures.
Last Update: April 2, 2003