Three Cedarville University senior engineering students received a once in a lifetime opportunity to work with the U.S. Air Force at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in advanced biomechanics technology. It was part of their senior capstone project, which was completed prior to their graduation in May.
Josiah Zurick, project leader, Thaddeus Krueger and Kimiye Wenger submitted a proposal to Wright Patterson Air Force Base to create customizable helmets for Air Force pilots.
Current helmets add instrumentation to the forward portion of the helmet adding weight and shifting the center of gravity (CG) of the helmet forward, which can cause neck fatigue and create risk of injuries if an airman ejects from the plane.
The students’ goal was to customize the helmet to bring the helmet CG more closely in line with the pilot’s head CG.
Krueger said, “When we were given this two-year project, we knew it could become a game-changing helmet for our Air Force pilots. I was really invested in this project because anything that we can do to keep our pilots safe is worthwhile.”
Krueger has been accepted into the Air Force flight training program and could benefit from new helmet technology.
The capstone team focused on using a CT scan segmentation analysis to identify the center of gravity of the human head taken from an existing cadaver database.
A new team of engineering students is taking the project from this point over the next academic year.