No More Helicopter Vibrations?

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Imagine a helicopter flight where the pilot and soldiers feel no vibration. The potential impact of vibration on the warfighter is substantial. A new research project could mitigate vibration, in order to help soldiers overcome issues associated with fatigue. This contributes to their readiness and results in a soldier who’s much more effective on the battlefield.

Military and commercial researchers are turning to the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, now known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory and its Multi-Degree of Freedom system to conduct basic research that allows them, and a growing list of customers, to look at subcomponent technologies under real-world vibration conditions in order to understand how they fatigue and fail.

With this knowledge, Army researchers and their academic and industrial collaborators hope to significantly reduce on-board vibration for helicopter pilots and other occupants.

“The discoveries we realize from this laboratory will help the Army understand how to mitigate vibration, and will allow us to influence the development of components that last longer and cost less to maintain,” said Dr. Asha Hall, mechanics division chief who oversees this work, cited by militaryspot.com. 

The MDOF system consists of a testbed and a mainframe computer that controls the vibration conditions and allows operation up to six degrees-of-freedom. The testbed can also rotate objects, such as components from air or ground vehicles, for example, rotor blades or parts of a seat, and subject them to the same frequencies and amplitudes, intensities as previously recorded schemes from real-world operations.