Evaluation of head and face injury potential of current airline seats during crash decelerations.

Details

• Creators:
  Swearingen, John J.
• Corporate Creators:
  United States. Office of Aviation Medicine
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Air transportation crashes
  • Commercial transportation
  • Airlines
  • Crash injuries
  • Head
  • Face
  • Impact studies
  • Dummies
  • Seats
  • Fatalities
  More +
• Publication/ Report Number:
  AM 66-18 ; DOT/FAA/AM-66/18
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States
• Corporate Publisher:
  Civil Aerospace Medical Institute
• Abstract:
  A large percentage of deaths in commercial-airline crashes is produced as the body and lower limbs flail around the seat belt. According to a previous study, a 10-foot-diameter sphere of clear area would be necessary to prevent a person from striking some portion of his body against surrounding structures. ; This study is concerned primarily with head impacts that may occur against most portions of the seats. Thirty-five impact studies were made with an instrumented dummy head against various portions of eight different makes of airline seats to determine the 'g' time-force parameters of metal deformation and seat break-over. Until recently these data could not be interpreted in terms of head injury or unconsciousness because data on human tolerance to impact against deformable structures were not available; however, a recently published study presents detailed data concerning these tolerances. ; These data are used here to determine the injury potential of the eight seats studied. Applying the earlier data to the seat-impact studies, 30% of these impacts would have produced fatal head injuries, 80% would have caused facial fractures, 97% would have rendered the passenger unconscious, and only 3% would have caused no injury or unconsciousness.
• Format:
  PDF
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/20787/dot_20787_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 2.87 MB]
• Collection(s):
  FAA Civil Aerospace Medical Institute ; US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:f4e39a15e1244800f256bec3665ba3d8b9a53d99d0d7e28cfabe2b01c4957b01eb807b72dd6d39aa6c539d9dcc77be9920665c688d1af85e3945551a860282b0