Volume 5, Number 5 September/October 1997
Small Business/SBIR
ASA SMALL BUSINESS INNOVATION Research program
contractor successfully crash-tested a small airplane designed to protect
occupants against fatal injuries using airbags and energy-absorbing composite
structures. All of the crash dummies on board in the final test "survived" the
crash, a first for general aviation crash tests.
Terry Engineering of Wichita, Kansas (with the help of Cirrus Design Corporation of Duluth, Minnesota, and NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia), has crash-tested a total of four airplanes over a two-year period at typical impact speeds of 60 mph involving earth and hard surfaces. The tests also successfully demonstrated an improved shoulder harness system and energy-absorbing seats.
The goals of the program were to apply the techniques, which have been successfully applied in military helicopters, race cars and modern automobiles, to improve the survivability in crashes of small composite airplanes and to reduce injury severity in survivable crashes.
The program used a combination of analysis, subscale quasi-static testing and full-scale crash-testing to achieve these goals, which were highlighted at a recent joint meeting of NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Advanced General Aviation Transport Experiment (AGATE), a U.S. light plane industry group working with the U.S. government to revitalize general aviation and make planes easier to operate.
For more information, contact Keith Henry at Langley Research Center.
Call 757/864-6120
E-mail: H.K.Henry@larc.nasa.gov
Please mention you read about it in Innovation.
