Basic Principles of Helicopter Crashworthiness
Abstract
Crashworthiness can be defined as the ability of an aircraft and its internal systems to protect occupants from injury in the event of a crash. In general, injury in aircraft crashes can be considered to arise from three distinct sources: (1) excessive acceleration forces; (2) direct trauma from contact with hard surfaces, and; (3) exposure to environmental factors such as fire, smoke, water, and chemicals resulting in burns, drowning or asphyxiation. Consequently, effective crashworthiness designs must consider all possible sources of injury and eliminate or mitigate as many as practical for a given design impact limit. This involves considerations of (1) strength of the container (cockpit and cabin), the adequacy of seats and restraint systems, (3) energy attenuation, (4) elimination of injurious objects in occupants local environment, and (5) post-crash factors, principally fire prevention and adequacy of escape routes. The U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk and AH-64 Apache helicopters were the first helicopters built to modern crashworthiness specifications. This paper uses data gained from the investigation of crashes of these helicopters to illustrate basic crashworthiness principles and to demonstrate their effectiveness when systematically incorporated into helicopter designs
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 1993
- Accession Number
- ADA267099
Entities
People
- Dennis F. Shanahan
Organizations
- United States Army Aeromedical Research Lab