ORBITAL RESEARCH INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: AF182-025

Description

Aircraft ejection systems are designed to safely eject the pilot and crewmembers along with their seat, parachute and survival pack. However, the egress event can become very chaotic which may cause injury to the ejected pilot in milliseconds. To better understand the egress system, ground based simulated testing is performed via sled tests in an attempt to realistically represent the ejection event. For this application, the Orbital Team proposes a new class of small sensor suites to accurately record time, space, and position information from the egress manikin and ejection seat during sled tests. The proposed sensor suites are capable of collecting the spatial and temporal sled test data to better than 0.5 microseconds, 1 foot and 1 degree. The proposed sensing solution is completely standalone which enables the integration of multiple units into both the egress manikin and seat. These sensor suites are able to quantifiably measure the time, position, pitch, roll, and yaw angles of the seat/manikin combination at the beginning of the sled test, though the egress event and to manikin hitting the ground. The results will be presented to the researchers shortly after the test event in a customer defined format.