Vertical Drop Test of a Transport Fuselage Section 2002-01-2997

The Structures and Materials Research Center of the National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan (NAL) conducted a vertical drop test of a fuselage section from a NAMC YS-11 transport airplane in December2001.

This test program is a part of research activities in NAL on the structural crashworthiness of transport aircraft. In addition a cooperative research related to this test program was carried out between NAL and Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd.(KHI). The main objective of this program is to develop optimal numerical models for crash simulation of aircraft fuselage and to obtain background data by drop tests of small-scale structural models and a full-scale fuselage section. Prior to the drop test of a full-scale fuselage structure, a trial numerical simulation on the crash behavior of a small-scale sub-floor structure was conducted by NAL using the explicit, nonlinear dynamic analysis code, LS-DYNA3D. In addition a full-scale finite element model of a fuselage section of YS-11 airplane was developed by KHI. A description of the preliminary study on a small-scale fuselage models and some of the results of a full-scale fuselage section drop test are presented in this paper.