Engineers and scientists from 14 government agencies recently crashed a former Marine CH-46 helicopter airframe at NASA Langley's Landing and Impact Research Facility in Hampton, Va.
The U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory at Fort Rucker, Ala., the U.S. Navy, the Federal Aviation Administration, the German Aerospace Center, and the Australian Cooperative Research Center for Advanced Composite Structures collaborated with NASA on this Transport Rotorcraft Airframe Crash Testbed full-scale crash test, which is part of NASA's Rotary Wing Project.
The purpose of the test was to collect data on composite structures and to answer questions aimed at occupant protection and injury mitigation during a helicopter crash.
The recent test was the second crash test in a series, and mimicked the first crash test that was completed in 2013. Like the first test, the helicopter was loaded with 15 crash-test dummies, lifted 30 feet into the air, and released -- crashing into a bed of dirt at about 30 miles per hour. This time, however, the helicopter stopped and only slid a few feet, compared to the first test where the helicopter slid approximately 5 feet. The impact represents a severe, but survivable condition under both civilian and military standards.
The helicopter was instrumented inside and out with a total of 40 high-speed cameras, recording more than 500 images per second. These images will allow researchers to understand how the fuselage cracked or collapsed under crash loads.
USAARL's support, funded by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, provided NASA with a reinforced legacy litter support system, a developmental litter system, and improved patient restraint systems for a comparative analysis to the legacy systems used in the 2013 crash test.
"USAARL's overall intent is to ensure that litter occupants, attending flight medics, and aircrew are protected during aircraft crash events. Testing in a dynamic environment provides USAARL and the Army with critical data needed to understand the dynamic force transmission during crash events. Data from the accelerometers mounted onto the litter support systems are essential to define strength and performance requirements for future patient movement items," said Joe McEntire, a USAARL research mechanical engineer leading the Army's collaboration effort.
McEntire said that the data will be used to influence the design requirements of future aeromedical transport equipment and patient litters.
Preliminary observations indicate considerable useful data were collected during the crash, and the information will be analyzed over the next few months.
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