Full-scale impact test and high-fidelity numerical simulation of typical civil transport aircraft

Impact response and crashworthiness design of civil aircraft structures are of paramount importance in avoiding major damage to aircraft structures and severe injury to the passengers. However, existing studies mainly focus on the crash responses and energy absorption design of element-level or component-level aircraft structures while limited impact response data of full-scale civil aircraft is reported up to now. In this work, a full-scale impact test of typical civil transport aircraft was conducted by a full-scale crash testing system. The structural responses, dummy responses and the ground impact load were obtained by the force and acceleration sensors, the high-speed camera system, full-field DIC deformation measurement methods. The testing results show that sub-cabin floor structures experience seriously deformation and upper-fuselage structures in the central wing area appear distinct deformation due to the inertia effect of the wing. The stiffness difference of various fuselage sections results in significant differences in the crash load and dynamic responses. Besides, finite element models of the full-scale civil transport aircraft were developed by using the explicit nonlinear finite element code Ls-Dyna. The simulation results of the full-scale aircraft are in good agreement with the testing responses in terms of structural responses and the ground impact load. Besides, a parametric analysis by using numerical simulations was carried out to investigate the influence of the pitch angle and the roll angle on impact responses of the full-scale civil transport aircraft. The results may enlighten the understanding of the crash response of full-scale civil transport aircraft which can fill the gaps in the building block approach of the crashworthiness design and provide fundamental experimental data for future energy absorption design.