Quantification and Prediction of Pilot Workload in the Helicopter/Ship Dynamic Interface

Abstract

The evaluation, early in the design cycle, of the limits for operating aircraft from ships in a wide range of sea states and atmospheric conditions has become an important issue for two main reasons. First, the simultaneous entry into service of new helicopter types and new naval platforms has generated an enormous task in the development of appropriate Ship Helicopter Operating Limits for in-service operations. Second, it has become clear that such operational factors need to be addressed at the design stage - which of necessity involves developing a predictive capacity in all of the areas which influence operational capability. These considerations need to take place in the context of technological advances which seek to assist the pilot in operations from ships. Improved radar for ship approaches and enhanced cueing, located around hangars and landing spots, are both areas which are being continually developed in association with upgraded aircraft systems for guidance, control, and stability augmentation. Ultimately, however, the situation comes down to the pilot's assessment of the workload involved in any task and the handling qualities of the vehicle being controlled. For this reason there has been a growing interest in two related areas: (i) the development of metrics to provide a consistent indicator of pilot workload and (ii) the enhancement of existing pilot models to generate authentic control activity in the aircraft/ship dynamic interface. This article describes recent techniques for extracting workload metrics from control activity and indicates the extent to which acceptably accurate workload predictions can be made. Some advances in pilot modelling are also described and examples are given to demonstrate the capability and limitations of currently available methods. Finally, the present state of integration of the two aspects into a robust tool for ship and aircraft system design is discussed. The focus of this article is, of necessity, on helicopter operations because that is where most of the current work has been centred.

Vibration Energy Harvesting Characterization of 1 cm2Poly(vinylidene fluoride) Generators in Vacuum

“…[11][12][13][14] For example, for extracting the energy from human walking, insoles made of a bilayer PVDF foil were fabricated by the Media Lab in Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 11,12) PVDF was also used to create generators to convert the flow energy available in oceans and rivers to electrical power.…”

“…11,12) PVDF was also used to create generators to convert the flow energy available in oceans and rivers to electrical power. 13) Another investigation of circular and square PVDF plates for harvesting energy from the changes of blood pressure has been carried out by Sohn et al 14) However, nowadays small size PVDF generators based on mechanical vibration are rarely reported in the literature. In this study, PVDF generators with two-dimensional area <1 cm 2 were fabricated for harvesting vibration energy.…”

Coupled Flight Dynamics and CFD Analysis of Pilot Workload in Ship Airwakes

“…Due to the combination of a moving ship deck and an unsteady, highly turbulent ship airwake, pilot workload for a rotorcraft operating in the vicinity of a ship can be very high, as shown in numerous simulation studies. [1][2][3][4][5] However, in these studies (as well as numerous others for various types of ships, including amphibious assault ships [6][7][8] , aircraft carriers 9 , and destroyers 10,11 ), the flowfield of the ship airwake is precalculated using a model based on CFD analysis; thus the flow is not affected by the presence of the rotorcraft. This one-way coupling of the aerodynamic interactions between the downwash of the rotorcraft and the ship airwake is somewhat questionable due to the nonlinear, unsteady nature of both the ship airwake and rotorcraft dynamics, which invalidates the principle of superposition.…”