NASA Drops A Helicopter For Full-Scale Crash Test

Image Caption: The former Marine CH-46E Sea Knight hit the dirt at about 30 miles an hour a severe but survivable impact condition under military and civilian standards. Credit: NASA Langley/David C. Bowman

Kathy Barnstorff, NASA Langley Research Center

Its not every day that you see a black and white polka-dotted helicopter hanging in the air, suspended by cables.

But then not every day is a crash test day at NASAs Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

[ Watch the Video: NASA Helicopter Crash Test A Smashing Success ]

NASA researchers and others from the military and national and international government agencies spent more than three years preparing for less than 10 seconds. Thats about how long it took for a 45-foot-long former Marine helicopter to fall 30 feet into a bed of dirt during the Transport Rotorcraft Airframe Crash Testbed (TRACT 2) full-scale crash test at NASA Langleys Landing and Impact Research (LANDIR) facility.

We chose soil because if you look at the mishap data the majority of the mishaps dont occur on prepared surfaces, like concrete said Martin Annett, lead test engineer. The helicopter plowed into the dirt at about 30 miles an hour a severe but survivable crash according to civilian and military standards.

Inside were 13 instrumented crash test dummies and two non-instrumented manikins. They were strapped in as cables hauled the helicopter fuselage into the air and then swung it to the ground, much like a pendulum. Just before impact pyro-technic devices released the suspension cables from the helicopter to allow free flight.

The test mimicked a similar one done last summer, but this time the helicopter stopped abruptly and only slid a few feet. Because it came to an abrupt stop theres a lot more load or jerking motion that gets imparted in the longitudinal direction, forward and backward, said Annett. One of the reasons that we do these types of tests is that we learn things when you drop them. You can design the test. Then you put the experiments into a full-scale helicopter in a combined-loading horizontal and vertical environment and they behave completely differently.

NASA and the Australian Cooperative Research Center for Advanced Composite Structures developed and installed three energy absorbing composite material concepts under the passenger floor for this test. That was in addition to other experiments designed to evaluate crashworthy concepts, including seats, restraints and the type of crash test dummies used to certify equipment inside aircraft.