The study of the biodynamic response of helicopter passengers and pilots, when excited by rotorcraft vibrations that are transmitted through the seat and, for the latter, the control inceptors, is of great importance in different areas of aircraft design. Handling qualities are affected by the proneness of the aircraft to give rise to adverse interactions, an unwanted quality that can be captured by the so-called biodynamic feedthrough. On the other hand, the transmissibility of vibrations, especially from the seat to the head, affects the comfort of pilots and passengers during flight. Detailed and parametrised multibody modelling of the human upper body can provide a strong base to support design decisions justified by a first-principles approach. In this work, a multibody model of the upper body is formed by connecting a previously developed detailed model of the arms to a similarly detailed model of the spine. The whole model can be adapted to a specific subject, identified by age, gender, weight and height. The spine model and the scaling procedure have been validated using the experimental results for seat to head transmissibility. The coupled spine-arms model is used to evaluate the biodynamic response in terms of involuntary motion induced on the control inceptors, including the related nonlinearities.

Helicopters are known to exhibit higher vibratory levels compared to fixed-wing aircraft. The consequences of vibrations depend on the affected helicopter component or subject. Specifically, pilots are in contact with several parts of the helicopter; vibrations can spoil the pilot-vehicle interaction. To evaluate the effects of vibration exposure on pilots, comfort levels resulting from whole-body vibration are computed. However, specific body parts and organs, e.g., hands, feet, and eyes are also adversely affected, with undesirable effects on piloting quality. Therefore, a detailed assessment is necessary for a more accurate estimation of pilot vibration exposure when comparing different configurations, tracking changes during design, and determining the safety of the flight envelope. A generalized assessment is presented by considering vibrations at the seat surface, hand-grip of controls, eyes, and feet. The suggested vibration measure includes comfort, handling, feet-contact, and vision in a single formulation. It is illustrated by coupling a high-fidelity biodynamic model of the pilot to a helicopter aeroservoelastic model in a comprehensive simulation environment. Using appropriate modeling techniques, vibration exposure of helicopter pilots could be evaluated during all stages of design, to achieve a more comfortable and safer flying environment.

This work shows how different occupant biodynamic modeling techniques are integrated in a rotorcraft design environment and discusses the resulting differences in comfort assessment. Three modeling techniques, that are used for biodynamic characterization, are considered: lumped parameter, finite element and multibody dynamics. These models are identified for the same gender, age, weight and height and then integrated into a virtual helicopter environment with a seat-cushion interface. A generic helicopter model is used to demonstrate the approach. For each of the three techniques, the vertical acceleration levels at the human-helicopter interface, as required by vibration regulations, and at the head are evaluated up to 30 Hz. At a first glance, it is observed that the lumped parameter is the easiest to implement in terms of model set-up. However, the use of lumped parameter models is limited to the population groups that they are identified from, and thus are not as flexible as the finite element and multibody ones in developing biodynamic models for individuals of an arbitrary population percentile. Furthermore, through numerical analysis it is found that the differences are not very significant in terms of accelerations at the human-seat interface. Therefore, for comfort related issues, the use of more complex models is not justified, unless complicated comfort assessments other than human interface accelerations are required. On the other hand, it is observed that the spine dynamics can play a significant role in estimating the acceleration of head; therefore, the sophisticated finite element and multibody dynamics models redeem their higher modeling cost and computation time when the head-neck health of occupants is considered.

Rotorcraft suffer from relatively high vibratory levels, due to exposure to significant vibratory load levels originating from rotors. As a result, pilots are typically exposed to vibrations, which have non-negligible consequences. Among those, one important issue is the degradation of instrument reading, which is a result of complex human-machine interaction. Both involuntary acceleration of the eyes as a result of biodynamics and vibration of the instrument panel contribute to a likely reduction in instrument reading capability, affecting flight safety. Therefore, being able to estimate the expected level of degradation in visual performance may give substantial benefits during vehicle design, allowing to make necessary adjustments while there is room for design changes or when retrofitting an existing aircraft to ensure the modifications do not adversely affect visual acuity and instrument reading ability. For this purpose, simulation is a very valuable tool as a proper model helps to understand the aircraft characteristics before conducting flight tests. This work presents the assessment of vibration-induced visual degradation of helicopter pilots under vibration exposure using a modular analysis environment. Core elements of the suggested analysis framework are an aeroelastic model of the helicopter, a model of the seat-cushion subsystem, a detailed multibody model of the human biodynamics, and a simplified model of ocular dynamics. These elements are combined into a comprehensive, fully coupled model. The contribution of each element to instrument reading degradation is examined, after defining an appropriate figure of merit that includes both eye and instrument panel vibration, in application to a numerical model representative of a medium-weight helicopter.

This paper proposes a new aeroelastic solution applicable to fixed and rotarywing aircraft by joining the multibody solver MBDyn and the mid-fidelity aerodynamic tool DUST, through the partitioned multi-physics coupling library preCICE. The coupled MBDyn-DUST simulation environment is intended for the evaluation of performance, loads, and vibratory levels of aircraft of unconventional configuration, such as tiltrotors, during critical transient maneuvers, and to perform aeroelastic stability assessment. The coupling has been tested and validated using simple aeroelastic models available in the literature, and subsequently used to simulate a tiltrotor roll maneuver in airplane mode.