FLUID STRUCTURE INTERACTIONS RESEARCH GROUP

Human Seat Interaction in High Speed Marine Craft

Tom Coe tec101@soton.ac.uk - School of Engineering Sciences Supervisors Professor J.T. Xing and R.A. Shenoi

The problem Background High speed planing craft are a popular choice for military, rescue, commercial and leisure applications The motions experienced on board such vessels are different to those found on larger ships and are found to be unpleasant, tiring and painful leading to reduced crew effectiveness and injury These motions are experienced in three dimensions To date these horizontal components have been ignored by researchers however international standards suggest they may be significant
The vibration environment is sufficiently extreme as to make human testing impractical from an ethical standpoint In order therefore to gain a better understanding of the problem it must be modelled In order to consider horizontal vibrations models are needed to replicate the human response to the 3 dimensional problem Existing vibration response models only consider the response to vertical vibration and ignore the horizontal component

Aim
To develop 3D human body vibration response models to investigate the humanseat interaction on board a high speed craft To produce design tools which can inform the designers of high speed craft vibration isolation systems

Three dimensional single degree of freedom lumped mass model

Lumped parameter models replicating vertical vibration have been developed with between 1 and 14 degrees of freedom (dof). Single dof models have been shown to replicate the apparent mass of the human body as well as more complex models Experimental data for the horizontal (x and y) directions suggests that one or two dof system would also represent apparent mass in these directions Using experimental data a model was developed to replicate apparent mass in three dimensions Combined with isolation seat model to investigate response to typical boat motions
SEAT = VDVseat 100 VDVdeck
VDV = a 4 0
t 1 4

yb

ksy ksx csy khy

mh

xb

khx csx chx

chy khz
ms

chz

csz
x y

Three dimensional mechanistic model To model the mechanisms of vibration a three dimensional FE model was developed the model is: Anatomically correct Material properties based on experimental data Validated at global and component level vs laboratory tests
350000

ksz

zb

300000

250000

Fapplied _ to _ seat ma = aat _ seat

40 20 0 0 -20 -40 Slam impact -60 -80 -100 time (s) Human response typical foam seat Human response typical suspension seat Human response alternative suspension seat 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12 0.14 0.16 0.18 0.2 acceleration (ms^-2)

Stress (N/m^2)

200000

150000

100000

50000 Disk stress 0 0 5 10 Fre que ncy (Hz) 15 20

Three dimensional mechanistic human body model

z-direction disk stress in the frequency domain

Human-boat-seat
Human seat interaction model considers base excitation at deck level The flexibility of the hull is not considered Incorporation of a structural model of a typical hull section allows the effect of the structural response of the hull to be included and quantified
0.45 0.4 0.35 0.3 0.25 0.2 0.15 0.1 0.05 0 0 500 1000 Frequency (Hz) Displacement (m) [.1m excitation] Location 1 Location 2 Location 3 Location 4 Location 5

Model validated using mechanical impedance (Z) laboratory data and component level data Mechanistic model allows alternative criteria to be studied such as disk stress

Z=
b

Fseat & x seat

Mechanical impedance (Z) , where F is force measured at the seat and is seat velocity

& x

FE Model- vertical response, comparison with experimental data

1500

2000

Finite element wedge to model boat transmissibility. a, response, b, model and c, maximum displacement mode

Conclusions 3D models allow the effect of non-vertical excitation to be analysed Mechanistic model allows alternative criteria to be studied Further work Correlation of FE model with back muscle data Combination human-wedge model excited by water loads Definition of operational conditions using towing tank data

Acknowledgements This work has been funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and assisted by the RNLI and MARSTRUCT, Data logging equipment has been purchased with funds from the Royal Academy of Engineering and School of Engineering Sciences.