Reusable Energy Absorbing Lab (REAL) Seat

Energy absorbing seats have played a critical role in increasing the survivability of rotary wing mishaps in both military and civilian rotorcraft. By using various methods of energy absorption, crashworthy seats limit occupant exposure to potentially injurious spinal loading and whole-body accelerations during a mishap. When testing aircrew-mounted equipment, or while conducting experiments on crashworthy seating systems, the costs associated with using a new or refurbished crashworthy seating system can prove to be cost prohibitive. To alleviate this cost burden and provide for substantially more iterative design support testing, a completely reusable Energy Absorbing (EA), crashworthy seat was desired. The Reusable Energy Absorbing Lab (REAL) Seat was developed to address this need. Through the Naval Innovative Science and Engineering (NISE) Workforce Development (WFD) program, a project was established to develop and validate the REAL Seat. The objective of the REAL Seat is to provide a capable, reusable EA seat that can be used as a Fleet representative test bed for simulating the use of a crashworthy seat. The REAL Seat is designed to simulate the kinematics of military crashworthy seating systems. It complies with MIL-S-85510 and MIL-S-58095, which are the legacy military standard baselines for cabin and cockpit crashworthy seating systems, respectively. By using a pneumatic-actuated braking system, the REAL Seat absorbs kinetic energy of the occupant and seat mass similar to that of an actual production crashworthy seating system. The REAL Seat can accommodate occupant sizes ranging from the 5th percentile female up to the fullyequipped 95th percentile male (119-275lbs). The seat can use a variety of restraint systems and seat cushions, allowing it to simulate the use a range of seating systems. The system has been successfully tested and has shown that it adequately represents the crashworthy seating systems presently fielded in military aircraft.