| Life rafts are widely employed by maritime vessels around the world as a means of evacuation during emergency situations. While operators must demonstrate due diligence in training their employees in evacuation procedures, these are generally completed under benign environmental conditions. The purpose of this study was to examine the performance of several life raft management tasks under calm and wave conditions.; 25 healthy male subjects volunteered for this study. There was a 2-hour training session delivered by survival training experts to all subjects prior to the data collection sessions. During the training session the following tasks were taught: tying rope, cutting rope, movement within the life raft, retrieving a sea anchor, inflating the floor, bailing and retrieval of a mannequin into the life raft. During the data collection sessions, participants were asked to repeat these tasks plus two tasks not previously demonstrated (changing flashlight batteries and a life raft chamber patching task) whilst in a 16-person life raft under two experimental simulated motion conditions: calm water and mechanically produced irregular waves (significant wave height of 0.58m; peak period of 2.55s). Time to completion and task execution quality were recorded during both conditions.; A between motion conditions repeated measures t-tests were performed on all tasks. As hypothesized, motion effects were a factor in the completion of most tasks. Results will provide manufacturers, regulators and operators with direction for future life raft design and training in hopes of ensuring higher survival rates for those employing a life raft during evacuation situations.; Key words: life raft, sea evacuation, motion environment... |
