A Comparison of Male and Female Acceleration Responses During Laboratory Frontal -Gx Axis Impact Tests

The incorporation of women into combat aircraft is expected to result in greater numbers of cockpit ejections with female crewmembers. Current safe ejection criteria are based on injury models which were established and validated using predominantly male data, and therefore do not fully take into account differences in biodynamic response due to size and gender. Recently the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has been addressing this deficiency by conducting experiments to evaluate gender differences using a population of female test subjects. In this study, male and female subjects were exposed to frontal impact acceleration pulses using a horizontal impulse acceleration facility. Acceleration responses were measured on the upper back at a point approximately in line with the first thoracic vertebral body. Analytical techniques were developed and used to compute the undamped natural frequency and damping coefficient ratio of these responses for each subject assuming a linear second-order approximation of the transfer of acceleration to the measurement point. No significant differences were found between males and females in either of these two parameters, nor was there any significant difference in the mean peak magnitude or mean time-to-peak of the measured acceleration response.Air Force Research Lab Wright-Patterson AFB OH Human Effectiveness Directorate is the author of 'A Comparison of Male and Female Acceleration Responses During Laboratory Frontal -Gx Axis Impact Tests' with ISBN 9781423531630 and ISBN 1423531639.