Martin-Baker Aircraft Company Ltd
"Aircrew Endurance and Lethality"
The Martin-Baker Approach to Comfort
Dr. Michelle Ransley
With governments wanting better performance from their aircrew and aircraft, demands upon crews are increasing. In particular, increased mission durations have led to a degradation of crew comfort.
The subjective nature of previous evaluations and the previous short duration missions have often led crews to the belief that a seat is perfectly comfortable, and it is only when changed mission profiles requiring extended seated durations that discomfort becomes an issue. Martin-Baker have approached this issue using live subjects for extended duration comfort studies, utilising both the Tekscan pressure mapping system and the 11 point General Comfort Rating (GCR) questionnaire to understand how early pressure contour images can foresee the forthcoming discomfort, hours before they affect the sitting aircrew.
It is acknowledged that comfort affects the state of mental and physical well being of the aircrew, and their lethality. Therefore understanding their endurance requirements and providing solutions to solve these issues are imperative for the future of high performance fast jet aircrew.
To download the full paper CLICK HERE (.PDF)
