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Adaptive Crew Seat Technology BAA Project funded by U.S. Navy

TSI and the University of Maryland are working to develop a revolutionary capability for tactical helicopter crew seats. Working in concert with project sponsors under a Broad Agency Announcement contract from the Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River, and commercialization partner, Simula Inc., the research team is working towards to design, fabricate and test an adaptive energy absorbing seat system that can optimally adapt its profile load to variations in occupant weight, sink rate, acceleration levels, and associated lumbar loads. The adaptation will be accomplished via (1) the use of a variable energy absorber that uses magnetorheological (MR) fluids, and (2) control system adaptation. MR fluids increase their energy absorbing (damping) characteristics when the magnetic field applied to the MR fluid is increased as the fluid passes through a magnetic valve. An adaptive feedback control system utilizing a semi-active nonlinear optimal control algorithm appropriate for the MR rotorcraft seat will be developed to achieve the following aims: �

Reduce transmissibility at the occupant or pilot seat to enhance mission duration by reducing fatigue.
Enhance crashworthiness and acceleration by maintaining lumbar loads below a prescribed threshold in order to enhance survivability as a function of sink rate, acceleration, and occupant weight.
The control system will achieve both of the above goals by switching the control strategy between a vibration control and crashworthiness enhancement strategy based on measurements supplied to the controller, such as sink rate, seat acceleration, and deck acceleration. �

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