Improvement of crashworthiness behaviour for simplified structural models of aircraft fuselage

When a commercial aircraft impinges on the earth in a potentially survivable crash accident, the fuselage of the aircraft should be designed to have enough crashworthiness capability to alleviate the impact load to an allowable level for the human body. The present paper aims to develop a design methodology for the improvement of crashworthiness behaviour of the fuselage. The first step, a simplified fuselage model, was suggested by introducing a hexagonal honeycomb energy absorption device into the sub-floor structure without sacrificing the volume of cargo. Next, drop tests for a small-scale fuselage model, both original and newly suggested ones, were carried out to examine the developed design methodology. It was shown that introducing a honeycomb energy absorption device would significantly decrease the acceleration level acted on the passengers. In addition, non-linear finite element software ABAQUS was used to simulate the drop tests. The numerical results were in good agreement with those of the test results. Also, the energy absorption behaviour of sub-components in the fuselage structure was evaluated and the optimised design for the energy absorption device was discussed based on the numerical predictions. Finally, the finite element model was extended to simulate some other impact conditions such as the change of roll angle. The discussions were also recorded.