Ever wondered what would happen if you dropped a Marine CH-46E helicopter from about 30 feet? A group of NASA engineers, along with representatives from the Navy, Army and Federal Aviation Administration set out recently to find out as part of joint effort to learn more about flight safety.
Engineers at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., dropped the helicopter fuselage filled with 15 dummy occupants from a height of about 30 feet. The exercise was conducted to test improved seats and seatbelts and gather information on the odds of surviving a helicopter crash.
"We designed this test to simulate a severe but survivable crash under both civilian and military requirements," NASA lead test engineer Martin Annett said. "It was amazingly complicated with all the dummies, cameras, instrumentation and the collaborators, but it went well."
The test included the use of cables to lift the "passenger" filled fuselage into the air and swing it to the ground. It was traveling at a speed of 30 mph when pyrotechnic devices separated the cable and let the fuselage hit the ground.
Testing officials said the fuselage hit hard. Thirteen crash-test dummies, each equipped with tracking instruments, showed the result of the rough ride which was captured by 40 cameras mounted inside and outside the fuselage.
The helicopter's unique black and white speckled paint job was by design, according to NASA test engineers.
"High speed cameras filming at 500 images per second tracked each black dot, so after everything is over, we can plot exactly how the fuselage reacted structurally throughout the test," NASA test engineer Justin Littell said.
The test was the first of two planned using the Navy-provided CH-46E Sea Knight fuselages. A similar helicopter equipped with additional technology will be used in a crash test next summer. All of the information will go towards developing computer models that can be used to design better and safer helicopters.