INTEGRATION OF A CRASHWORTHY TROOP SEAT SYSTEM INTO THE CH-53D SEA STALLION

The U.S. Navy has recently qualified the integration of a crashworthy troop seat system into the CH-53D Sea Stallion. The Navy faced the challenge of qualifying a seat system that includes the seat, seatto- airframe attachments, and airframe support structure to withstand both the dynamic requirements on the seat as well as the static requirements on the airframe with streamlined test and evaluation. Dynamic testing in conjunction with Finite Element Analysis (FEA) were used to quantify these capabilities. This paper describes the methodology and results of the Navy’s evaluation of the structural integrity of the seating platform, restraint harness and seat-to-airframe attaching hardware, the capability of the airframe structure to react to loads resulting from crash impact conditions, and the system compliance with human injury tolerance criteria. This is the first time that dynamic testing has been performed to generate the empirical data needed to accomplish integration of a crashworthy troop seat into an existing Naval helicopter platform.