A Multivariate Anthropometric Method for Crew Station Design: Abridged

• Main Authors: Zehner, Gregory F, Meindl, Richard S, Hudson, Jeffrey A
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Subjects: ANTHROPOMETRY; APPROACH; CLEARANCES; COCKPITS; COMPUTERS; CONTROL; ERGONOMICS; ERRORS; EXTERNAL; FLIGHT CREWS; HUMAN BODY; Human Factors Engineering & Man Machine System; INTERNAL; MEASUREMENT; MILITARY AIRCRAFT; Military Aircraft Operations; MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS; PE62202F; PERCENTILE MAN APPROACH; PILOTS; POPULATION; SIZES(DIMENSIONS); STATIONS; STATISTICAL DATA; Statistics and Probability; VISION; WUAL718408DI

Body size accommodation in USAF cockpits is still a significant problem despite all the years of experience and the many aircraft designs that have been developed. Adequate reach to controls, body clearances (particularly during escape) and vision (internal and external), are all functions of pilot body size and position in the cockpit. One of the roots of this problem is the way cockpit accommodation is specified and tested. For many years the percentile pilot has been used. This paper describes the errors inherent in the 'percentile man' approach, and presents a multivariate alternative for describing the body size variability existing in a given flying population. A number of body size representative cases are calculated which, when used properly in specifying, designing, and testing new aircraft, should ensure the desired level of accommodation. The approach can be adapted to provide anthropometric descriptions of body size variability for a great many designs or for computer models of the human body by altering the measurements of interest and/or selecting different data sets describing the anthropometry of a user population. Anthropometry, Crew station design, Ergonomics, Size.