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NASA is developing a new crewed vehicle and desires a lower risk of injury compared to automotive or commercial aviation. Through an agreement with the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing, Inc. (NASCAR®), an analysis of NASCAR impacts was performed to develop new injury assessment reference values (IARV) that may be more relevant to NASA's context of vehicle landing operations. Head IARVs associated with race car impacts were investigated by analyzing all NASCAR recorded impact data for the 2002-2008 race seasons. From the 4015 impact files, 274 impacts were selected for numerical simulation using a custom NASCAR restraint system and Hybrid III 50th percentile male Finite Element Model (FEM) in LS-DYNA. Head injury occurred in 27 of the 274 selected impacts, and all of the head injuries were mild concussions with or without brief loss of consciousness. The 247 noninjury impacts selected were representative of the range of crash dynamics present in the total set of impacts.

Jet Engines may experience severe vibration due to the sudden imbalance caused by blade failure. This research investigates employment of on board magnetic bearings or piezolectric actuators to cancel these forces in flight. This operation requires identification of the source of the vibrations via an expert system, determination of the required phase angles and amplitudes for the correction forces, and application of the desired control signals to the magnetic bearings or piezo electric actuators. This paper will show the architecture of the software system, details of the control algorithm used for the sudden imbalance correction project described above, and the laboratory test results.