Crash Simulation of Vertical Drop Tests of Two Boeing 737 Fuselage Sections

A 30-ft/s vertical drop test of a 10-ft-long fuselage section of a Boeing 737 (B737) aircraft was conducted in October of 1999 at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) William J. Hughes Technical Center, Atlantic City International Airport, NJ. This test was performed to evaluate the structural...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jackson, Karen E, Fasanella, Edwin L
Format: Report
Language:English
Subjects:
B737 AIRCRAFT
CRASH SIMULATION
CRASHWORTHINESS
DROP TESTS
FUEL TANKS
Fuels
FUSELAGES
NONLINEAR SYSTEMS
OVERHEAD STOWAGE BINS
SIMULATION
STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY
STRUCTURAL RESPONSE
Transport Aircraft
VERTICAL ORIENTATION
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Summary:A 30-ft/s vertical drop test of a 10-ft-long fuselage section of a Boeing 737 (B737) aircraft was conducted in October of 1999 at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) William J. Hughes Technical Center, Atlantic City International Airport, NJ. This test was performed to evaluate the structural integrity of a conformable auxiliary fuel tank mounted beneath the fuselage floor and to determine its effect on the structural response of the airframe. A second drop test of a similar B737 fuselage section was conducted in November of 2000 in which two different overhead stowage bins were evaluated. These tests present an invaluable opportunity to evaluate the capabilities of computational tools for crash simulation through analytical and experimental correlation. To perform this evaluation, a full-scale three-dimensional finite element model of the fuselage section was developed. A crash simulation was conducted using the explicit, nonlinear transient dynamic code, MSC.DytranTM. For the initial simulation, structural deformation and floor-level acceleration responses were generated and correlated with experimental data obtained during the drop test of the B737 fuselage section with the auxiliary fuel tank. The focus of the follow-on simulation was to develop pretest predictions of the fuselage and overhead bin responses for correlation with data from the vertical drop test of the second B737 fuselage section. An assessment of the accuracy of the pretest predictions was made and model improvements were suggested. Several of the model improvements were implemented and the effects of the changes on model accuracy were evaluated.