#DOES G FORCE TRAINING HURT SOFTWARE#

Sitting straight up could help decrease the chance of injury during ejection.Įjection is a harsh reality that some pilots face. The relaxed posture correlates with increased stress on the endplate (the region between a vertebrae and an intervertebral disc), as the relaxed posture increases anterior flexion (forward bending) of the spine that is then increased by compression.

Thoracolumbar spines in normal and relaxed postures shown in the image above were simulated with an acceleration peak of 15 g for 0.2 sec.

#DOES G FORCE TRAINING HURT SOFTWARE#

One study modeled ejection using the finite element method, which can mathematically model the spine’s response to forces, and imaging software to investigate the effect of posture on spine injury severity. The larger loads and accelerations also correlated with lower-level injuries (L4 and L5 vertebrae). Data analysis produced injury probability curves, which showed a 95% chance of injury with an acceleration of 20 g. Another study constructed a drop tower and subjected 23 lumbar spines (T12-L5) to axial forces between 2.1 (472 lbs) and 7.3 kN (1,641 lbs) and accelerations between 8 and 23 g. The resulting fractures for both specimens were on the L1 vertebrae, and one fracture was stable while the other was unstable. One study applied axial loads of 5.2 kN (1,169 lbs) on two different spines from cadavers with a peak acceleration of around 20 g to simulate ejection. Thoracolumbar (lower back) fractures can be modeled using a variety of methods. The large rate of loading causes spinal fractures that can be either unstable and require surgery due to the movement of vertebrae or stable and treated with a brace. This is mainly to prevent unconscious crashes into terrain, but it also prevents pilots from entering tighter and tighter turns that they cannot leave.Photo from Patel et al., Pediatric Practice: Sports Medicine, 2009 If a pilot is in blackout or prolonged greyout, the aircraft ignores pilot input and tries to fly straight and level. More recently aircraft have adopted digital systems that will right an aircraft if the pilot fails to respond to an alarm within a certain period of time.

In addition, some aircraft set artificial limits on how tight a pilot can turn to prevent pilot injury and airframe stress (The F-14 could survive much more than 6-7Gs but that limit was set on the controls to reduce wing stress and failure). The earliest example of this is the G-suit, which pushes blood that pools in the lower half of the body back up to the brain using air pressure lines and sacs. There are many safety features built into aircraft that can maneuver into such high-G turns, however. Less severe maneuvering will not break bones very easily, but they can produce neck injuries. I believe he was disabled in a leg or maybe both but he did not fly again. I currently cannot find a source for this but I remember listening to my dad's friends (USN) talk about visiting the pilot. In one miraculous instance, a USAF pilot was able to land after pulling a 9G turn and breaking his back. With the aid of a spine model, they calculated the forces on the lower cervical spine and noted that the forces were of the same order of magnitude as failure loads of cervical vertebrae and estimations of maximum cervical spine muscle forces. pilots of high-performance aircraft frequently sustained cervical spine injuries due to their exposure to high gravitational forces (5), these investigators measured accelerations about the head of an F-16 fighter pilot during simulated air combat maneuvers. Unfortunately, the bone most susceptible to injury is the spine because that is the one of the few structures supporting real weight other than itself. Yes, there have certainly been cases in which fighter pilots break bones while performing high-G turns.

Does g force training hurt