Effects of Flight Environment on Pilot Workload in Simulated and Actual Flight

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the effects of the stress from actual flight environment on the pilot workload, with the comparison analysis of the pilot workload under the simulated and actual flight environment. Twelve pilots participated in three simulation flight tasks with different workload levels and three pilots in the actual flight task. ECG indicator parameters were recorded with the biological feedback system in flight experiments. The workload was evaluated with four subjective evaluation rating scale after each flight task. There are strong correlations among workload from four subjective evaluation scales but strong correlation among few ECG parameters under three simulated flight tasks, strong correlations among workload value from subjective evaluation scales and ECG indicators in actual flight task. There are significant differences on pilot workload in the different phases of all the flight tasks from subjective evaluation scales, ECG indicators existed significant differences among all the flight phases just in actual flight task. Subjective evaluation methods can be used to measure the workload under simulated and actual flight tasks, but ECG only can be used well in the flight environment with higher stress. There are huge effects of stress from actual flight environment on pilot workload.