Virtual fit assessment of U.S. army body armor using NASA spacesuit techniques.

Autor: Kim KH; Leidos, Inc, United states. Electronic address: han.kim@nasa.gov., Green WJ; Geologics, Inc., United states., Hernandez Y; KBR Inc., United states., Rajulu SL; NASA Johnson Space Center, United states., Choi-Rokas HE; United States Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Soldier Center, United states., Li P; United States Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Soldier Center, United states., Garlie TN; United States Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Soldier Center, United states., Mitchell KB; United States Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Soldier Center, United states.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Applied ergonomics [Appl Ergon] 2024 Oct; Vol. 120, pp. 104339. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Jul 04.
DOI: 10.1016/j.apergo.2024.104339
Abstrakt: Fit and accommodation are critical design goals for a body armor system to maximize Soldiers' protection, comfort, mobility, and performance. The aim of this study is to assess fit and accommodation of body armor plates for the US Army. A virtual fit assessment technique, developed, validated, and deployed by NASA for spacesuit design, was adopted for this work. Specifically, 3D manikins of the Soldier population were overlaid virtually with geometrically similar surrogates of the armor plates. Trained subject matter experts with the US Army and NASA manually assessed the fit of the armor plates to manikins using a computer visualization tool and selected the appropriate plate size and position. A prediction model was built from the assessment data to predict the plate size from an arbitrary body shape and the resultant patterns of body-to-plate contact were quantified. The outcome indicated a unique trend of the plate sizes covarying with anthropometry. More pronouncedly, when the overlap between the body tissue and armor plate was quantified, female Soldiers are likely to experience a 25 times larger body-to-plate contact volume and 6.5 times larger contact depth than males on average, due to sex-based anthropometric differences. Overall, the prediction model and contact patterns provided key metrics for virtual body armor fit assessments, of which the locations, patterns, and magnitudes can help to improve sizing and fit of body armor systems, as previously demonstrated for NASA spacesuit design.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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