Drop test and crash simulation of a civil airplane fuselage section

Crashworthiness of a civil airplane fuselage section was studied in this paper. Firstly, the failure criterion of a rivet was studied by test, showing that the ultimate tension and shear failure loads were obviously affected by the loading speed. The relations between the loading speed and the average ultimate shear, tension loads were expressed by two logarithmic functions. Then, a vertical drop test of a civil airplane fuselage section was conducted with an actual impact velocity of6.85 m/s, meanwhile the deformation of cabin frame and the accelerations at typical locations were measured. The finite element model of a main fuselage structure was developed and validated by modal test, and the error between the calculated frequencies and the test ones of the first four modes were less than 5%. Numerical simulation of the drop test was performed by using the LS-DYNA code and the simulation results show a good agreement with that of drop test. Deforming mode of the analysis was the same as the drop test; the maximum average rigid acceleration in test was 8.81 g while the calculated one was 9.17 g, with an error of 4.1%; average maximum test deformation at four points on the front cabin floor was 420 mm, while the calculated one was 406 mm, with an error of 3.2%; the peak value of the calculated acceleration at a typical location was 14.72 g, which is lower than the test result by 5.46%; the calculated rebound velocity result was greater than the test result 17.8% and energy absorption duration was longer than the test result by 5.73%.