Description
For this assignment, interpret, complete, and format the lab report presented in the Module 7 – Case Study: FAASTeam Lab Report. Using the dialogue from the case study, provided notes, as well as the raw data, finish your team’s lab report.
To complete the report, you must produce the following.
Cover page.
Introduction section synthesizing and interpreting the case study’s central research problem and context.
Procedures section synthesizing and interpreting the experiment’s procedures, equipment and instrumentation, and data collection and analysis methods.
Results and Discussion section synthesizing and interpreting the results of the case study’s experiments, as well as providing commentary and explaining the results.
Conclusions section synthesizing and interpreting the connections between the case study’s purpose and its findings, as well as any recommendations based on its results.
At least three new data visualizations based on the case study’s raw data.
Use current APA formatting for Informal Lab Reports and ensure that your report is free of grammar, spelling, and mechanical errors.
THE SCENARIO
The following scenario is used to complete the activities outlined in the Next Steps section of this page.
You are working as the Primary Investigator with a Federal Aviation Administration’s Safety Team (FAASTeam). Your particular workgroup has just finished a round of innovative experiments to measure pilot injuries in minor small plane crashes. Now that the experiments have concluded, your task is to spearhead the completion of your team’s final informal laboratory report. Your division managers at the FAA are anxious for your team to report. Your team is smart and talented, but you know they also can have trouble organizing their ideas and applying the correct format. The final work of actually writing the report falls on you.
Before the report deadline, you call your most veteran teammate, Margaret Farnsworth to summarize the experiment’s key background and context. Margaret explains:
These were very exciting, needed experiments, and I imagine their results will yield valuable insights into how small plane cockpits can be designed and maybe even regulated to improve pilot safety. In a lot of ways, what we’ve done as a team represents the FAA taking a serious step into modernizing its approach to studying flight and crash safety.
I can still remember the old Controlled Impact Demonstration series back in 1984, out at Edwards. I was out there on my one of my first assignments, and it was a spectacle to see that fully-fueled Boeing 720 smash into the desert. That fireball! Whoever thought to crash a plane by remote control?
It really brings me full-circle to the same kind of experiment so late in my career. I’m glad we got to focus on small planes this time. From my time in the archives, there are somewhere around 115 small plane crashes in the United States every year. Whatever their cause, pilots of small planes often face serious, even life-changing injury. According to our internal records, 15 pilots died in small plane crashes across the US last year, and many more thousands suffered severe, even critical injuries to their heads, torsos, arms, and legs. Bless their hearts.
Anyway, I pulled out a bunch of historical data out of the system. We should include it in the report. Some of those dinosaurs like me in the Regional Office need to know about the actual human life and limb at-stake in our work. I sent what I had to Geoff…
After thanking Margaret and hanging up, you email engineer Barbara Roberts to clarify their perspective on the experiments’ objectives. Barbara replies with the following email: Robert’s Email (DOCX)Download Robert’s Email (DOCX)
Next, you walk down the hall to chat with programmer Geoff Kamehameha about experiments’ materials and procedures. Geoff gladly recounts the team’s work:
Well, our crash experiments certainly weren’t as fun as what they got to do back in the 80s, that’s for sure. Instead of crashing actual planes we gamed the entire thing. I mean, our partnership with ERAU and use of their HubTM Simulation Software made the entire thing cheap and easy, so there’s that.
I mean, plus, not like we could ever get the budget for actual plane crashes any more, and crashing airplanes on purpose seems very wasteful, dangerous, and potentially damaging to the natural environment. So instead, we simulated the entire thing. Pretty dang cool. We got to program in all the details, all the way down to the airframe and weather. I chose the Cessna 172 Skyhawk. Since we’re partnered with ERAU and they fly so many of them, I thought it was a cool egg to throw in. We kept the weather partly cloudy with a ceiling of 1,000 feet, a five knot headwind and visibility at three miles. We even simulated a THOR-AV-50M crash-test dummy. Spare no expense, right?!
The plane’s pitch angle was controlled at 10 degrees for all model sets. The first model set the plane’s impact velocity angle at 15 degrees, with an impact velocity of 30 meters per second. The second model set the plane’s impact angle at 30 degrees, with an impact velocity of 38 meters per second. The third model set the plane’s impact angle at 45 degrees, with an impact velocity 41 meters per second.
Farnsworth sent me something the other day, I’ll throw it together with the specifics and blast it over your way; no worries.
When you return to your office, you’ve received the following .excel file with the key experiment result data, as well as the historical data from Margaret: Key Experiment Result Data (XLSX)Download Key Experiment Result Data (XLSX) (attached)
Finally, you email Samuel Uchiha, who you know has a keen eye and takes extensive notes about details most people miss. Samuel replies with the following email: Uchiha Email (DOCX)Download Uchiha Email (DOCX) (Attached)
With all of your team’s input, contributions, and perspectives in-hand, you set about the work of developing and formatting the informal laboratory report.
Unformatted Attachment Preview
ENGL 221: Technical Report Writing
Uchiha’s Email
From: Samuel Uchiha
Date: 10/25/21
To: FAASTeam 7
Subject” Experiment #901788 notes
Attachments: Lawrence2008.pdf
Salutations,
Determining injures based on simple physics is not a precise science. The correlation between the force exerted
on a human body and the potential for injuries resulting form that force is subject to many other complex
variables. Generally speaking, however, the greater force exerted in less time will correspond with the more
likely and severe damage to the human body.
Since the correlation between injuries and physics is not scientifically precise, interpreting our data requires a
notable measure of subjectivity. This subjectivity represents a considerable limitation in our work. Nevertheless,
we mitigated our subjective limitation by utilizing prior work and standard. A former colleague of mine was
part of a series of ejection-seat tests run through NASA’s Scientific and Technical Information program.
Lawrence et al. (2008) noted that previous work by Eiband et al. (1959) and Snyder (1973) offered useful
impact tolerance graphs to help quantify injury forces. Unfortunately, because of Lawrence’s (2008) work was
bound by physical limitations the graphs weren’t useful in terms of their own specific analysis. However, our
digital format proved useful in this regard. Using the Eiband et al. (1959) chart offered as Figure two in
Lawrence’s (2008) study, I’ve qualified the injuries observable in the data:
Experiment 1:
Type 1:
Head: Moderate injury likely. Survivable.
Torso: Minor injuries or uninjured.
Arms: Severe injuries likely. Potential loss of limbs.
Legs: Severe injuries likely. Potential loss of limbs.
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All rights are reserved. The material contained herein is the copyright property of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University, Daytona Beach, Florida, 32114. No part of this material may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the
prior written consent of the University.
Type 2:
Head: Severe injury likely. Potentially survivable.
Torso: Moderate injury likely. Likely survivable.
Arms: Severe injuries likely. Potential loss of limbs.
Legs: Severe injuries likely. Potential loss of limbs.
Type 3:
Head: Moderate injury likely. Survivable.
Torso: Moderate injury likely. Survivable.
Arms: Severe injuries likely. Potential loss of limbs.
Legs: Severe injuries likely. Potential loss of limbs.
Experiment 2:
Type 1:
Head: Moderate injury likely. Survivable.
Torso: Moderate injury likely. Survivable.
Arms: Moderate injury likely.
Legs: Moderate injury likely.
Type 2:
Head: Severe injury likely. Potentially survivable.
Torso: Severe injury likely. Potentially fatal.
Arms: Moderate injury likely.
Legs: Moderate injury likely.
Type 3:
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All rights are reserved. The material contained herein is the copyright property of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University, Daytona Beach, Florida, 32114. No part of this material may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the
prior written consent of the University.
Head: Severe injury likely. Potentially fatal.
Torso: Severe injury likely. Potentially fatal.
Arms: Potentially severe injury.
Legs: Potentially severe injury.
Based on these interpretations of our results, I feel comfortable concluding that pilots’ use of restraints in small
planes has considerable impact on the degree of injuries sustained in the kinds of crashes we studied. Most
notably, the use of restrains correlated with less severe injuries to the torso and head. The use of restraints in the
two more severe crash scenarios (#2 and #3) demonstrated the most notable reduction to pilot injuries. I’d
wager a pilot using restraints could survive a #2 or #3 type crash, whereas they would almost certainly perish
without.
I want to also highlight that the use of restraints does seem to correlate to more severe injuries to the arms and
legs. I lack the medical expertise to make a scientific claim, but it seems like slowing down the impact to the
head and torso increases the speed of impact to the extremities. That isn’t a scientific hypothesis, just my guess.
Regardless of the cause-and-effect relationship, our data show more severe injuries to pilots’ limbs are likely
when restraints are in-use. The use of restraints, then, appears to be an issue of life or limb. This reality should
be reflected in our conclusions. The increased likelihood of more severe injuries to pilot legs across all three
crash-types is particularly concerning, and warrants further study.
Finally, please note following value ranges associated with the probability language used above:
Likely: 66-100% probability
Potentially: 33-66% probability
I have also attached a copy of Lawrence et al. (2008) for your review, should you be interested. For what it’s
worth, I’ve also heard rumors that Administration is hungry for commercial application or regulation in their
quest for power. You may want to address those issues as they relate to our findings in your final interpretation,
but I won’t get involved with profiteering.
Until our next assignment.
~ S. Uchiha
worldwide.erau.edu
All rights are reserved. The material contained herein is the copyright property of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University, Daytona Beach, Florida, 32114. No part of this material may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the
prior written consent of the University.
Crash mode
Human error
Mechanical
Weather
Bird
Pilot
Unknown
Distribution (five year)
36
163
231
52
98
5
FATAL
SEVERE HEAD
SEVERE TORSO
SEVERE ARMS
SEVERE LEGS
15
8
32
1064
896
MODERATE HEAD
MODERATE TORSO
MODERATE ARMS
MODERATE LEGS
148
285
5633
10655
PILOT WITH RESTRAINTS
AVERAGED ACROSS MODEL RUNS
Type 1 crash
Type 2 crash
G
Head
Torso
left arm/hand
right arm/hand
left leg/foot
right leg/foot
Sec.
40
15
68
65
52
54
0.006
0.01
0.0062
0.0061
0.0079
0.0075
G
Head
Torso
left arm/hand
right arm/hand
left leg/foot
right leg/foot
Sec.
65
0.0052
36
0.098
98
0.0056
100
0.0055
58
0.0046
62
0.0046
Type 3 crash
G
Head
Torso
left arm/hand
right arm/hand
left leg/foot
right leg/foot
Sec.
95
52
120
123
110
111
0.003
0.005
0.003
0.003
0.0036
0.0036
PILOT WITHOUT RESTRAINT
Type 1 crash
G
Head
Torso
left arm/hand
right arm/hand
left leg/foot
right leg/foot
Type 2 crash
Sec.
40
20
35
32
47
42
0.012
0.02
0.0073
0.0071
0.0079
0.0075
G
Head
Torso
left arm/hand
right arm/hand
left leg/foot
right leg/foot
Sec.
46
50
46
42
72
71
0.01
0.016
0.0068
0.0065
0.0056
0.0056
Type 3 crash
G
Head
Torso
left arm/hand
right arm/hand
left leg/foot
right leg/foot
Sec.
65
55
77
73
130
132
0.006
0.01
0.0046
0.0044
0.0028
0.003
ENGL 221: Technical Report Writing
Robert’s Email
From: Barbara Roberts
Date: 10/25/21
To: FAASTeam 7
Subject: Experiment #901788 objectives
Attachments: Lawrence2008.pdf
Experiment Series #901788, “Pilot restraint testing: Small plane,” was initiated at 0945 on October 1,
2021. The objectives for #901788 were to measure the impact forces subjected to pilots during smallplane crashes, and to compare the different forces subject to pilots with and without the use of
restraints. By comparing the different forces subject to pilots with and without the use of restraints,
#901788 sought to conclusively demonstrate key differences in the types and degree of injuries
sustained by pilots with or without restraints.
The results of Experiment Series #901788 are intended to contribute to current FAA review of smallplane design and regulation, particularly with respect to pilot restraint use recommendations for takeoff and landing. Since most small plane crashes happen on approach, #901788 is specifically focused on
crashes at landing. Experiment Series #901788 is part of a larger FAA initiative to review the following
parts of Title 14 CFR: 21, 23, 45. Experiment Series #901788 is also intended to test the viability of
software simulation as a replacement for live-field experiments with respect to crash safety science. The
current collaboration with ERAU represents an important public-private partnership that modernizes the
FAA’s approach to studying crash safety.
BR
worldwide.erau.edu
All rights are reserved. The material contained herein is the copyright property of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University, Daytona Beach, Florida, 32114. No part of this material may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the
prior written consent of the University.
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