Advanced Helmet for Maintainer Head and Hearing Protection

Improved head and hearing protection is required for aircraft maintainers working on a carrier flight deck during launch and recovery operations. The current head protection is inadequate in many aspects including impact protection, hearing protection, cleaning, comfort, and compatibility with night vision goggles (NVGs) and with chemical, biological, and radiological (CBR) equipment. Creare proposes a new maintainer helmet that meets the needs of today’s flight deck crew. The helmet will use advanced materials and innovative fabrication techniques in a design that is based on a recently completed program of intensive testing on the effectiveness of hearing protection components in extreme noise environments. To be effective, the design must resolve the many competing requirements for comfort, weight, and compatibility without reducing hearing protection performance. In Phase I, we designed, fabricated, and tested a prototype helmet to demonstrate the feasibility of our helmet concept. In the second phase of the project, we propose to complete a number of design/build/test cycles to improve the helmet design and evaluate its performance in the field. At the completion of the project, we aim to have a maintainer helmet system ready for production.