Crashworthiness design and evaluation of civil aircraft structures

One of the most critical air transportation issues is the passengers' protection during collision and impact events that must be absorbed in a controlled way in order to reduce damages. The capability of an aircraft to eliminate injuries in relatively mild impacts and to reduce severe effects on occupants in critical crashes is called crashworthiness. The crashworthiness is the ability of a structure to protect occupants during dynamic events. It is usually measured by the capacity of a structural system to dissipate kinetic impact energy by itself, by means of a controlled and predictable deformation aimed to minimize stresses and accelerations on passengers during a crash. In aeronautical applications, the crashworthiness is dominated by the crash response characteristics of typical fuselage sections (including occupant/seat restraint system), and the crashworthiness evaluation mainly includes fuselage structural response evaluation and occupants’ level of injury evaluation. This special issue consists of four papers, starting with a review of the crashworthiness design and evaluation aspects of civil aircraft fuselage structures, followed by a review of the impact response characteristics and the crashworthy design principles for composite fuselage structures. The third paper addresses the issue of the lack of standard experimental procedures to assess the crashworthiness of composite structures whereas the fourth paper describes a numerical model for the simulation of the side impact of an aircraft passenger.