Vertical Drop Test of Composite Fuselage Section of a Regional Aircraft

Abstract

In this paper, a vertical drop test of a full composite fuselage section of a regional aircraft has been presented. This test was performed to investigate the structural response of a prototype of a composite fuselage section as well as the biomechanical response of the anthropomorphic dummies under a vertical crash loading condition. The research activity, carried out within the framework of Metodi di CERtificazione e Verifica Innovativi ed Avanzati (CERVIA) ‡ ‡ project, allowed collecting suitable amount of data for the assessment of the reliability of numerical models. The test article consists of a composite fuselage section with a diameter of 3445 mm and a total length of 4750 mm. It includes all main structural components, the passengers, and the cargo floor structure. Fuselage section has been also equipped with an aeronautical three-seat row. The accelerations, recorded in different locations, demonstrate that the structure is able to absorb a considerable impact energy amount, thus to mitigate the acceleration levels induced to the passengers.

Development of a Morphing Landing Gear Composite Door for High Speed Compound Rotorcraft

“…In some studies [3] the main complexity of landing gear design is the identification of shock absorber characteristics, in order to match the airworthiness and aircraft requirements. Other studies [4,5] have demonstrated that the loads under impact and validation in non-linear conditions…”

“…In some studies [3] the main complexity of landing gear design is the identification of shock absorber characteristics, in order to match the airworthiness and aircraft requirements. Other studies [4,5] have demonstrated that the loads under impact and validation in non-linear conditions represent another challenge in landing gear design, in normal, and off nominal flight conditions, such as crash-landing ones. The design of the Racer trap doors requires stiffness considerations and the coupling effects of aerodynamic and inertial load with structure behavior [6].…”

Experimental and Numerical Crashworthiness Study of a Full-Scale Composite Fuselage Section

“…To verify its structural behavior under a dynamic load condition and to estimate its passive safety capabilities, the fuselage section was equipped with crash resistant data acquisition system (DAS), markers, anthropomorphic dummies (equipped with cell loads and accelerometers), accelerometers and strain gauges, and the entire test was filmed by two high-speed cameras, as presented in detail by the authors in [43].…”

“…To monitor the dynamic structural response of the test article, 11 piezo-resistive accelerometers were installed as illustrated in Fig. 3d: three accelerometers in correspondence of the central bay of the cargo floor, seven accelerometers on the main floor, and the last one on the uppermost of the skin, in central position [43].…”

“…During the summer of 2017, within the Innovative and Advanced Verification and Certification methods (CERVIA) project, a 9.14 m∕s drop test was conducted to investigate the energy absorption capabilities of a full-scale composite fuselage section of a civil aircraft in terms of both deformations and failures, to acquire local accelerations during the crash event on ground and to get useful information about the biomechanical injuries affecting the passengers. This experimental test, presented in detail in a previous work of the authors [43], has been used in the current study to establish the developed and improved predictive numerical model based on the explicit finite element method (FEM), already studied by authors in [44], from a CbA point of view. The test results have been compared with the numerical ones to validate the adopted numerical procedure, and a good agreement has been reached.…”