Vertical Drop Test of Composite Fuselage Section of a Regional Aircraft

What is it about?

The aeronautic accidents statistics show a constantly decreasing number of accidents per million departures from the 1950s to today, even if the worldwide flight operations increased significantly but the percentage of survivability remains almost constant. The chances of survivability for such flight operations can be significantly improved when the aircraft structure limits, as much as possible, the loads transferred to the occupants as well as allows passengers to escape the aircraft, without being entrapped by the aircraft, preserving the volume of survival. In addition, the current trend in aeronautics shows an extended use of composite materials for the design of primary airframe structures such as fuselage thus the setup of methods to design this type of structures in order to improve the percentage of survivability in case of certain condition of crash is one of the main challenge in aeronautic. The validation of methods and the collection of data (i.e. accelerations) can be performed by performing specific crash test of representative structures. Today these type of test are not requested by airworthiness normatives but agreed case by case as bilateral agreement between the manufacturer and the Authority. CIRA (Centro Italiano Ricerche Aerospaziali) thanks to world class crash plant is involved for several years in this activities and now the results of a full-scal test of composite fuselage of a CS-25 vehicle is conducted. That is strongly contribuiting to the achievements of the aforementioned goals and to the social impacts for more safe airplans.

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