Comparison of Mobile Aircrew Restraint Strategies in a Full-Scale CH-46 Airframe Crash Test

A full-scale crash test of a USMC CH-46 helicopter airframe was conducted at NASA-Langley Research Center. One of the internal experiments was an assessment of mobile aircrew restraint concepts. Two Hybrid III Pedestrian Anthropomorphic Test Devices (ATD's) were positioned in a standing position, just aft of the crew door. On the left side, a traditional gunner's belt was employed. On the right side, the Mobile Aircrew Restraint System (MARS) was employed with the Aircrew Endurance vest. The motivation behind this experiment was based on several mishap-based injuries of mobile aircrew that were using traditional gunner's belts. However, correlation of presumed injury causes with equipment deficiencies was difficult because of a near total void of mobile aircrew restraint testing data in a system-level environment. For the condition tested, the measured results for the two ATD's indicated a dramatic reduction in injury probability when employing the MARS. In contrast, the ATD equipped with the gunner's belt experienced accelerations and forces that could generally be considered lethal.