On Tuesday, September 22, 2015 at 8:05:33 PM UTC-7, John B. wrote:
On Tue, 22 Sep 2015 13:00:59 -0700, The Real Bev
wrote:

On 09/20/2015 04:04 PM, wrote:

I could go into great detail about helmets since I started learning
about them as the Safety Director of the American Federation of
Motorcyclists about the time Bell started and I had some long
discussions with people at Bell. I am also an engineer and a
scientist. I wrote one of the few peer reviewed papers on bicycle
helmets.

Long ago I had/read a USAF publication about helmet design which had a
lot of useful/interesting information. I recently did a google etc.
search for it and turned up nothing. Did you ever read that?


Out of curiosity, what was the U.S.A.F. publication about? The usual
pilot's, or air crew member's, helmet is more a matter of holding all
the things needed in proximity to the head and protection from wind
forces when ejecting, rather than falling off :-)

Originally a helmet was designed to hold your microphone and earphones. These were the old leather helmets. Later because of the violent g-forces on planes newer than the P-40 they developed the plastic helmets to keep you from injuring yourself from your head slapping from side to side against the many protrusions.

I don't know their present design but I do remember them experimenting with the helmet first strapped to your shoulders to keep it rather straight, to a design of the seats headrest shaped to receive the helmet and lock it more or less in place.

The main use is in combat with extreme g-forces so the pressures are mainly side to side and USUALLY accelerative. But Aces used deceleration to great advantage so they must have made some changes for that.

When you are near or above the speed of sound and pull the throttles back it feels like you hit a mountainside. Or so I'm told. I was a bomber grunt.