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Effects of Standing, Upright Seated, vs. Reclined Seated Postures on Astronaut Injury Biomechanics for Lunar Landings

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Abstract

Astronauts may pilot a future lunar lander in a standing or upright/reclined seated posture. This study compared kinematics and injury risk for the upright/reclined (30°; 60°) seated vs. standing postures for lunar launch/landing using human body modeling across 30 simulations. While head metrics for standing and upright seated postures were comparable to 30 cm height jumps, those of reclined postures were closer to 60 cm height jumps. Head linear acceleration for 60° reclined posture in the 5 g/10 ms pulse exceeded NASA’s tolerance (10.1 g; tolerance: 10 g). Lower extremity metrics exceeding NASA’s tolerance in the standing posture (revised tibia index: 0.36–0.53; tolerance: 0.43) were lowered in seated postures (0.00–0.04). Head displacement was higher in standing vs. seated (9.0 cm vs. 2.4 cm forward, 7.0 cm vs. 1.3 cm backward, 2.1 cm vs. 1.2 cm upward, 7.3 cm vs. 0.8 cm downward, 2.4 cm vs. 3.2 cm lateral). Higher arm movement was seen with seated vs. standing (40 cm vs. 25 cm forward, 60 cm vs. 15 cm upward, 30 cm vs. 20 cm downward). Pulse-nature contributed more than 40% to the injury metrics for seated postures compared to 80% in the standing posture. Seat recline angle contributed about 22% to the injury metrics in the seated posture. This study established a computational methodology to simulate the different postures of an astronaut for lunar landings and generated baseline injury risk and body kinematics data.

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Abbreviations

2 g/50 ms:

Half-sinusoidal pulse with 2 g (19.6 m/s2) peak acceleration and 50 ms rise time

2.7 g/150 ms:

Half-sinusoidal pulse with 2.7 g (26.5 m/s2) peak acceleration and 150 ms rise time

5 g/10 ms:

Half-sinusoidal pulse with 5 g (49 m/s2) peak acceleration and 10 ms rise time

AIS:

Abbreviated Injury Scale

Ant–Post:

Anterior–posterior

ATD:

Anthropomorphic Test Device

AUC:

Area under the acceleration pulse curve

BrIC:

Brain Injury Criterion

CG:

Center of gravity

CI:

Confidence interval

FE:

Finite element

GHBMC:

Global Human Body Models Consortium

HBM:

Human Body Model

HIC:

Head Injury Criterion

IARV:

Injury Assessment Reference Value

Jerk:

Peak acceleration/rise time

M50-PS:

GHBMC average-male simplified pedestrian model

NASA:

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

N ij :

Neck Injury Criterion

PMHS:

Post-Mortem Human Subject

RTI:

Revised tibia index

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by a NASA Human Research Program Student Augmentation Award to NASA Grant No. NNX16AP89G. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the GHBMC, NASA, or KBR. All simulations were run with the support of Cody Stevens and Adam Carlson.

Conflict of interest

Dr. Stitzel and Dr. Gayzik are members of Elemance, LLC, which provides academic and commercial licenses of the GHBMC-owned human body computer models.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Wake Forest School of Medicine, 575 N. Patterson Ave, Suite 530, Winston-Salem, NC, 27101, USA

    Mitesh Lalwala, Bharath Koya, Karan S. Devane, F. Scott Gayzik, Joel D. Stitzel & Ashley A. Weaver

  2. Virginia Tech-Wake Forest Center for Injury Biomechanics, 575 N. Patterson Ave, Suite 530, Winston-Salem, NC, 27101, USA

    Mitesh Lalwala, Bharath Koya, Karan S. Devane, F. Scott Gayzik, Joel D. Stitzel & Ashley A. Weaver

  3. Department of Biostatistics and Data Science, Wake Forest School of Medicine, 525 Vine Street, Winston-Salem, NC, 27101, USA

    Fang-Chi Hsu

  4. KBR, 2400 NASA Parkway, Houston, TX, 77058, USA

    Keegan M. Yates & Nathaniel J. Newby

  5. NASA Johnson Space Center, 2101 NASA Parkway, Houston, TX, 77058, USA

    Jeffrey T. Somers

Authors
  1. Mitesh Lalwala
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  2. Bharath Koya
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  4. Fang-Chi Hsu
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  6. Nathaniel J. Newby
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  7. Jeffrey T. Somers
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  8. F. Scott Gayzik
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  9. Joel D. Stitzel
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ashley A. Weaver.

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Associate Editor Stefan M. Duma oversaw the review of this article.

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Lalwala, M., Koya, B., Devane, K.S. et al. Effects of Standing, Upright Seated, vs. Reclined Seated Postures on Astronaut Injury Biomechanics for Lunar Landings. Ann Biomed Eng 51, 951–965 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-022-03108-7

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