Development and Flight Demonstration of An Active Seat Mount System for Aircrew Whole-Body Vibration Mitigation on NRC Bell-412 Helicopter

Helicopter aircrew are exposed to high levels of whole-body vibration (WBV) in fight operations, which may degrade their ride comfort and performance in the short-term, and contribute to some health issues in the long-term. This paper presents the latest development and flight test demonstration results of an active seat mount system that is designed to reduce helicopter aircrew WBV levels through active cancellation of the N/rev vibration peaks related to the helicopter main rotor speed. A prototype airworthy hardware of the active seat mount system has been developed based on previous bench-top-test designs to meet airframe integrity requirements for installation and flight testing on the Bell-412 helicopter. Extensive experimental results on human occupants using a shaker table facility and flight demonstrations on the NRC Bell-412 helicopter in representative flight conditions are presented and discussed. The active seat mount system has achieved significant reduction to the occupant WBV levels at the bottom seat cushion interface per ISO2631/MIL-STD-1472G metrics, and also showed effective mitigation to the occupant head vibrations. These investigations demonstrate that the active seat mount technology is a feasible solution for helicopter aircrew WBV mitigation.