Study on the armed helicopter crashworthiness design

After the end of the conflict in Southeast Asia of Viet Nam, the US army draws a lesson from the conventional design of armed helicopters in which the crashworthiness requirement was not considered and hence leaded to heavy casualties during the conflict. The advanced technology of the crashworthiness design was first adopted in U. S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk and AH-64 Apache Helicopters and it was demonstrated that crash survival rate is increased significantly up to 95%. This study is focused on the basic design principles of helicopter crashworthiness and the key problems in the design specification. The purpose of the paper is to provide with some theoretical instruction for new type of armed helicopter crashworthiness design in China.