Impact Testing and Simulation of a Crashworthy Composite Fuselage

A composite fuselage concept for light aircraft and rotorcraft has been developed to provide improved crash protection. The fuselage consists of a relatively rigid upper section, or passenger cabin, including a stiff structural floor and a frangible lower section which encloses the crash energy management structure. A 60-in. diameter full-scale fuselage section was manufactured using a composite sandwich construction. Vertical drop tests were conducted at both 0°-and 15°-roll impact attitudes to evaluate the crashworthy features of the fuselage design. The experimental data are correlated with predictions from a finite element model developed using the nonlinear, explicit transient dynamic code, MSC/DYTRAN. Finally, the full-scale impact data are compared with scaled data obtained from similar impact tests of a 1/5-scale model fuselage. This comparison was made to investigate the existence of scaling effects and to demonstrate the application of scale model technology in the development of a composite structural concept.