How do G-suits work?
In: Physics
When you get your blood pressure measured, a small strap squeezes your arm. A G-suit works in a similar way, except it uses much more force and has bigger and many more of the air bladder throughout the suit. These air bladders are hooked up to an air compressor inside of the plane. When you enter a high-G maneuver, (Like a sharp turn), a lot of the blood gets trapped in your legs due to it being pulled downward. This can result in you blacking out due to the lack of blood reaching your brain. So the plane senses the high-G’s and uses the G-suit to squeeze your legs (By sending compressed air into the air bladders), helping to move the blood out of your legs and back up to the rest of your body.
From what I know, the G-suits only have air bladders on the legs. So they only work for positive G’s, not negative. The pilots also have special physical techniques to help prevent whiting or blacking out.
If you mean suits worn with the purpose of regulating blood flow during high-G aircraft maneuvers, here you go.
The problem during high-G maneuvers is that blood can flow in irregular ways, being pushed towards the outside of the turn like a centrifuge.
In order to counteract this, a G-suit squeezes selectively to create pressure that prevents excess blood from flowing into that part of the body. Most commonly this is the legs to prevent a lack of blood to the brain.
The mechanism for this, at least the known ones, is liquid flowing into bladders to apply pressure.
G-suits have pockets where air is pushed during high G manouvers so it compresses the body and restrains the blood from going to the extremities so the pilot won’t black out from lack of blood to the brain.
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