مطالعه ارگونومیک کلاه های بالستیک مرسوم

Ballistic helmet is a standard infantry equipment that provides ballistic protection from fragmenting to the head, temples, ear and neck of the wearer. This paper presents the study of the design of a locally used ballistic helmet, i.e. Personnel Armor System for Ground Troop (PASGT) type helmet, from ergonomic perspectives and the identification of potential risk areas of injury based on the current ballistic helmet design. Two quantitative assessment techniques are employed in the investigation. First, a set of questionnaires were distributed to the current users of the PASGT helmet. The result showed that the 54.8% of respondents experienced pain on the parietal (top) area of their head, which is a potential risk area of head injury. Second, an experiment with 10-mm thick sponge layer added to the interior part of the helmet was conducted to test its effect on the contact pressure between the head of the wearer and the medium size PASGT helmet while jogging on a treadmill at 8 km/h for 180 seconds. Mean of peak contact pressure with and without wearing the sponge of 2.5 kPa and 2.6 kPa, respectively, are obtained from the practical test. The maximum of peak contact pressure is found to be 3.6 kPa with the sponge and 4.2 kPa without the sponge. The results obtained in this study indicate that there are areas of discomfort interior to the PASGT helmet in contact with the wearer and that the discomfort can be minimized by appending a sponge layer to the frontal of the helmet.

Ballistic military helmets are intended to protect the head of the wearer whilst providing ‘sufficient amount’ of comfort. Head and neck represent just 12% of the body area that is typically exposed in a battle field. However, they receive up to 25% of all hits and almost half of all combat deaths are caused by head injuries [1]. Among others, the reason might arise from the fact that the helmet is not being worn as often as it should be by the troops. This paper presents two quantitative methods to measure the level of comfort as experienced by wearers of a locally used ballistic helmet, i.e. Personnel Armor System for Ground Troop (PASGT) type helmet, from ergonomic perspectives and the identification of potential risk areas of injury based on the current ballistic helmet design.

The study on ergonomic factor for conventional ballistic helmet which is a PASGT helmet is being investigated in this study in order to study and investigate the design of locally used ballistic helmet from ergonomic perspective, both in questionnaire survey and experimental method. Starting with performing the first assessment which is by implementing a sheet of questionnaire survey to 73 sample size of Malaysian army in Wardieburn Camp, the outcome obtained are encouraging. The result of questionnaire is indicated that there are a lot of problems experienced by the helmet user in ergonomic viewpoint such as weight, maintainability and heat retention. From the questionnaire also, the parietal area of head is found as the potential risk areas of injury. In order to further investigate the comfort effect on PASGT helmet user, an experiment regarding pressure mapping system is performed on 30 subjects of ROTU on a treadmill at a gymnasium of UiTM Shah Alam. The experiment is done with velocity of 8 km/h (2.2 m/s) within 180 seconds time duration. This time duration is being determined by performing a preliminary experiment and it is found that time does not radically change with pressure as being discussed previously. By this, two important findings are found from the main experiment on those 30 subjects. The result obtained for mean of peak pressure without wearing the sponge is 2.6 kPa and 2.5 kPa with wearing the sponge. Meanwhile, the maximum of peak pressure without and with wearing the sponge are 4.2 kPa and 3.6 kPa respectively. Generally, the contact pressure between the helmet and the head wearer can be decreased by placing a sponge or any other absorption materials that will absorb the vibration occur while wearing the helmet. As the Kevlar material is having a hard surface, it is a good suggestion to have some sort of sponge material inside the helmet. Simultaneously, this will increase the comfort feeling among the users especially for the Malaysian army.