Prediction of Anthropometric Accommodation in Aircraft Cockpits

Designing aircraft cockpits to accommodate the wide range of body sizes existing in the U.S. population has always been a difficult problem for Crewstation Engineers. The approach taken in the design of military aircraft has been to restrict the range of body sizes allowed into flight training, and then to develop standards and specifications to ensure that the majority of the pilots are accommodated. Accommodation in this instance is defined as the ability to: (1) adequately see, reach, and actuate controls; (2) have external visual fields so the pilot can see to land, clear for other aircraft, and perform a wide range of missions (ground support/attack or air-to-air combat); and (3) if problems arise, be able to escape safely. Each of these areas is directly affected by the body size of the pilot. The USAF is considering relaxing body size entrance requirements so that smaller and larger people could become pilots. Existing accommodation problems will become much worse. This dissertation describes a methodology for correcting this problem and demonstrates it by predicting pilot fit and performance in the USAF T-38A aircraft based on anthropometric data. The methods described can be applied to a variety of design applications where fitting the human operator into a system is a major concern. A systematic approach is described which includes: defining the user population, setting functional requirements that operators must be able to perform, testing the ability of the user population to perform the functional requirements, and developing predictive equations for selecting the future users of the system.Air Force Research Lab Wright-Patterson AFB OH Human Effectiveness Directorate is the author of 'Prediction of Anthropometric Accommodation in Aircraft Cockpits', published 2001 under ISBN 9781423524663 and ISBN 1423524667.