Innovative Composite Fuselage Design for Improved Crashworthiness

An innovative composite fuselage design concept was developed which will meet structural and flight loads requirements and satisfy design goals for improved crashworthiness. The fuselage is fabricated using a composite sandwich construction and 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. This report describes the advantages of the fuselage concept, the fabrication process for building a 1/5 scale model of the fuselage concept, and the experimental procedure used to conduct an internal pressure test of the section. In addition, the STructural Analysis of General Shells (STAGS) finite element code was used to analyze design modifications and to simulate the structural response of the fuselage section to internal pressure testing.