Design Objectives for Tomorrow's Escape Systems

Escape systems for USAF aircraft must be designed to successfully recover crew members from disabled aircraft under a myriad of conditions. These conditions encompass a wide speed range, vary with altitude, and involve adverse aircraft attitudes including high sink rates. Designing a system which will satisfactorily perform over the entire spectrum poses many problems which necessitate various trade-offs to achieve a practical escape system. Emphasis is now being placed on low speed, low altitude, high sink rate, and adverse attitude escape capability. This is a significant problem area today and will be even more important with the advent of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft. Escape and recovery under these conditions can be achieved only when the time from initiation of the escape sequence to full inflation of the parachute is kept to a minimum. However, the high speed performance of aircraft is increasing, with further complicates the escape system design. This paper briefly analyzes the ejection systems of the past, explores the proposals for today's systems, and explains the criterion that must be embodied in tomorrow's design to meet the expanding requirements of USAF aircraft.