Aircraft Seats and Landing Gear
The crashworthiness of the aircraft is determined by the design of several structural elements acting together in order to reduce inertial forces below an acceptable level. Major structural elements involved in the absorption of impact energy are the specially designed landing gear, the sub-floor structure and the seats. In the event of a crash, the crashworthiness features of the seat and landing gear become a significant factor in determining whether the occupant receives serious injury or even death.
Aircraft Seats
The crashworthy features of aircraft seats today incorporate some type of a mechanical device in order to absorb the energy from an impact. These energy absorbers use a pre-defined load-displacement profile in their design, which can be overly sensitive and not compatible with the wide range of occupants weights. Aircraft seats do not adequately attenuate the energy during a crash pulse. The Impact Dispersal System is scalable for occupant size and immediately activates at low force levels reducing a high spike at the point of impact.
Aircraft Landing Gear
The ability to effectively deal with high energy impacts is a key area of improvement for fixed and rotary wing aircraft. Acceleration induced damage and occupant injury is a key focus area for the improvement of the aircraft. The IDS can be incorporated into existing landing gear systems to improve the high energy impact performance. The system can also be designed into new landing gear systems that have even higher levels of performance with full integration of IDS valve technology. Impact Dispersal Systems have been designed that can extend the hydraulic cylinders to maximum levels during an impact event to allow for maximum impact dispersion.