With the growing threat of improvised explosive devices over the past decade, Army researchers have been hard at work testing and evaluating ways to keep Soldiers safe from bomb blasts.
The U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command analyzes under-body blasts, known as UBB.
Researchers at the Army Research Laboratory Survivability and Lethality Analysis Directorate, or SLAD, have led to many improvements in vehicle design.
“Through
live-fire tests, we have been able to provide a comprehensive
characterization of the blast environment and occupant injuries during a
UBB,” said Sarah Coard, Army researcher. “Only by understanding the
mechanism of injury can we apply engineering changes [to vehicles] to
decrease the likelihood of those injuries. The blast environment is
unique.”
The Army’s concern is always the same: how can a vehicle
be modified to reduce the likelihood and severity of injuries to
Soldiers?
“The test and evaluation community is working to a
standard that 10 years ago would have been unimaginable,” said Scott
Welling, a member of SLAD’s Engineering Analysis Branch. “The number of
data channels that are used today in a test event is greater than five
times the amount used prior to these conflicts.”
Army experts are leveraging an ever-growing wealth of test data.
The
Army’s approach to live-fire testing, leverages mechanical engineering
experts in the Engineering Analysis Branch and the
crew-injury-physiology experts in the Warfighter Survivability Branch.
Welling and Coard are partners as RDECOM’s representatives on the
integrated product team for live-fire testing. This ensures a
comprehensive analysis of the survivability of both the crew and their
vehicle.
“Another use for the data may be surprising,” Coard said.
“Improving the test instrumentation itself and refining and enhancing
the test scenarios. One such instrument is the anthropomorphic test
device, a crash-test dummy originally developed by the automotive
industry. For UBB testing, it has become obvious that the ATD must be
modified if it is to provide the most accurate data. So ARL is now
leading an experimentation program to enhance the ATD for use in future
tests.”
Not only is instrumentation improving, but test designs
have also become more sophisticated. In the past, a vehicle would often
be tested with one crash-test dummy in it. Now, it is required that
there be a crash-test dummy in every occupant location in a vehicle.
Officials
said another significant change is the adoption of new and current
injury criteria in order to make assessments more accurate and to
achieve greater resolution in inferring what injuries would result and
how. A further way that test design has evolved is by the introduction
of new methodologies to analyze the motion of seats and floors.
The
current war-time environment has caused testing specifications to grow
and timelines to shrink. The Army has been responding to urgent materiel
releases.
The Army is looking at the structural response of the vehicle and the survivability of its occupants.
For every vehicle or piece of equipment tested, researchers analyze the blast’s effect on communications, mobility, firepower and mission success.
Because
analysis demands so much more than merely capturing data, a holistic
vantage point is vital, officials said. The testing enables researchers
to provide this context to evaluators, program managers and vehicle
designers.
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