• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.521-530
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• 2011

Since aircraft fuel tanks have many interfaces connected to the airframe as well as the fuel system, they have been considered as one of the system-dependent critical components. Crashworthy fuel tanks have been widely implemented to rotorcraft and rendered a great contribution for improving the survivability of crews and passengers. Since the embryonic stage of military rotorcraft history began, the US army has developed and practised a detailed military specification documenting the unique crashworthiness requirements for rotorcraft fuel tanks to prevent most, hopefully all, fatality due to post-crash fire. The mandatory crash impact test required by the relevant specification, MIL-DTL-27422D, has been recognized as a non-trivial mission and caused inevitable delay of a number of noticeable rotorcraft development programs such as that of V-22. The crash impact test itself takes a long-term preparation efforts together with costly fuel tank specimens. Thus a series of numerical simulations of the crash impact test with digital mock-ups is necessary even at the early design stage to minimize the possibility of trial-and-error with full-scale fuel tanks. In the present study the crash impact simulation of a few fuel tank configurations is conducted with the commercial package, Autodyn, and the resulting equivalent stresses and internal pressures are evaluated in detail to suggest a design improvement for the fuel tank configuration.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.715-722
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• 2011

In this paper, the behavior of nuclear-power plant subjected to an aircraft impact is performed using the parallel analysis. In the erstwhile study of an aircraft impact to the nuclear-power plant, it has been used that the impact load is applied at the local area by using the impact load-time history function of Riera, and the target structures have been restricted to the simple RC(Reinforced Concrete) walls or RC buildings. However, in this paper, the analysis of an aircraft impact is performed by using a real aircraft model similar to the Boeing 767 and a fictitious nuclear-power plant similar to the real structure, and an aircraft model is verified by comparing the generated history of the aircraft crash against the rigid target with another history by using the Riera's function which is allowable in the impact evaluation guide, NEI07-13(2009). Also, in general, it is required too much time for the hypervelocity impact analysis due to the contact problems between two or more adjacent physical bodies and the high nonlinearity causing dynamic large deformation, so there is a limitation with a single CPU alone to deal with these problems effectively. Therefore, in this paper, Message-Passing MIMD type of parallel analysis is performed by using self-constructed Linux-Cluster system to improve the computational efficiency, and in order to evaluate the parallel performance, the four cases of analysis, i.e. plain concrete, reinforced concrete, reinforced concrete with bonded containment liner plate, steel-plate concrete structure, are performed and discussed.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.3 no.3_4
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• pp.435-455
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• 2012

An impact on the ground surface may represent several phenomena, such as a crash of an airplane or an explosion or the passage of a train. In order to analyze and design structures and equipment to resist such a type of shocks, the response spectra for an impact on the ground must be given. We investigated the half-space motions due to impact using the finite element method. We performed extensive parametric analyses to define a suitable finite element model and arrive at displacement time histories and response spectra at varying distances from the impact point. The principal scope of our study has been to derive response spectra which: (a) provide insight and illustrate in detail the half-space response to an impact load, (b) can be readily used for the analysis of structures resting on a ground subjected to an impact and (c) are a new family of results for the impact problem and can serve as reference for future research.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.16-23
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• 2023

The aircraft fuel system performs a number of functions such as supplying fuel, transferring fuel between fuel tanks, and measuring the amount of residual fuel in each fuel tank. Since it is a direct cause of fire hazard in crash incident, it is a must to improve survivability of crew members by designing the airframe to tolerate expected crash impact. The civil aviation authority requires intensive verification of the fuel system design to determine precise application of the airworthiness requirement. Research activity on airworthiness certification criteria and verification scheme is still insufficient, although it has a significant importance. In this paper, as part of a study to improve flight safety by developing guidelines for demonstrating fuel system crash resistance, analysis results of fuel system crash-related airworthiness certification standards, verification scheme, and cases study applicable to military rotorcraft have been reviewed.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.724-729
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• 2017

The crashworthiness of the fuel tank of a rotorcraft is verified through the crash impact test. The crash impact test has a high risk of failure due to the application of an excessive load, which can seriously affect the overall development schedule of the aircraft. Therefore, a lot of effort has been made to minimize the possibility of failure in the actual test by carrying out a numerical analysis of the crash impact test of the fuel tank in the initial design stage. Recently, an external auxiliary fuel tank was added to increase the cruising distance. In this study, the numerical analysis results of the crash impact test based on several different shapes of the external auxiliary fuel tank are presented, in order to evaluate its crashworthiness. For the numerical analysis, smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), which is one of the fluid-structure coupled analysis methods, is applied and the test conditions prescribed by US military standards are reflected in the analysis conditions. In addition, the material property data previously obtained by the specimen test of the actual fuel tank is applied to the numerical analysis. As a result, the equivalent stress of the fuel tank material itself and the metal fitting is provided and the possibility of acquiring data for designing the crash-worthiness of the external auxiliary fuel tank is evaluated by examining the behavior and working load of the internal mounted components.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.43 no.5
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• pp.413-420
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• 2011

In Korea, although the concept of dry storage system for PWR spent fuels first emerged in the early 1990s, wet storage inside nuclear reactor buildings remains the dominant storage paradigm. Furthermore, as the amount of discharged fuel from nuclear power plants increases, nuclear power plants are confronted with the problem of meeting storage capacity demand. Various measures have been taken to resolve this problem. Dry storage systems along with transportation of spent fuel either on-site or off-site are regarded as the most feasible measure. In order to develop dry storage and transportation system safety analyses, development of design techniques, full scale performance tests, and research on key material degradation should be conducted. This paper deals with two topics, structural analysis methodology to assess cumulative damage to transportation packages and the effects of an aircraft engine crash on a dual purpose cask. These newly emerging issues are selected from among the many technical issues related to the development of transportation and storage systems of spent fuels. In the design process, appropriate analytical methods, procedures, and tools are used in conjunction with a suitably selected test procedure and assumptions such as jet engine simulation for postulated design events and a beyond design basis accident.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aviation and Aeronautics
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.126-136
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• 2013

Aircraft accidents these days, following the mega sizing trend of the aircraft, result in enormous losses of human lives apart from those of property, which cannot be replaced by any means. As most recently, in April 20, 2012, a Boeing 737 passenger plane departed Karachi on an augural flight to Islamabad, Pakistan, crashed close to an express highway on final approach, all 121 passengers and 6 crew members were killed. As such a large number of fatalities have been recorded in aircraft accidents while accident investigation results show that more than 95% of aircraft accidents are now survivable. There are three basic stages in surviving the aircraft accident: surviving the crash impact, the evacuation process and the hostile post evacuation environmental elements. These stages require the cabin crew's expeditious and appropriate actions on the basis of systematic and thorough cabin safety training in order to increase occupants' survivability, along with the passengers' preparedness. In this aspect, this paper examines the issues acting as the impediments to the passenger survival in inflight emergency situations, that are the deficiencies with cabin crew safety training, related performances and the shortcomings in passengers' knowledge on inflight safety information, leading to their inappropriate responses to emergency situations. These issues are analyzed and the root causes are identified, suggesting the resolving countermeasures.

• Advances in aircraft and spacecraft science
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• v.4 no.5
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• pp.529-541
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• 2017

Landing phase is one of the crucial and most important phases during robotic aerospace explorations. It concerns the impact of the landing module of a spacecraft on a celestial body. Risks and uncertainties of landing are mainly due to the morphology of the surface, the possible presence of rocks and other obstacles or subsidence. The present work quotes results of a computational analysis direct to investigate the stability during the landing phase of a lander on Phobos, a Mars Moon. The present study makes use of available software tools for the simulation analyses and results processing. Due to the nature of the system under consideration (i.e., large displacements and interaction between several systems), multibody simulations were performed to analyze the lander's behavior after the impact with the celestial body. The landing scenario was chosen as a result of a DOE (Design of Experiments) analysis in terms of lander velocity and position, or ground slope. In order to verify the reliability of the present multibody methodology for this particular aerospace issue, two different software tools were employed in order to emphasize two different ways to simulate the crash-box, a particular component of the system used to cushion the impact. The results show the most important frames of the simulations so as to provide a general idea about how lander behaves in its descent and some trends of the main characteristics of the system. In conclusion, the success of the approach is demonstrated by highlighting that the results (crash-box shortening trend and lander's kinetic energy) are comparable between the two tools and that the stability is ensured.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.81-88
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• 2020

Flight data recorder is a equipment that records data required for investigation of aircraft accidents and should be developed in compliance with the ED-112A standard. Unlike general data storage device, flight data recorder must be able to recover data after an aircraft accident, requiring a housing and a memory board to protect data in extreme environments. To attain this performance, we designed a housing that can withstand the test by analyzing the physical environment of the impact, shear/tensile, penetration resistance and static crush test of the crash survival test and minimized the size and weight compared to the existing one in consideration of the installation of the aircraft in this paper. Insulation material and thermal block material were applied to endure high and low temperature fire so that the internal temperature does not rise above 150℃ even in 260℃, 10 hour environment. In addition, the memory board is designed to minimize the size and we devise a hoping programming method to prevent continuous data loss of more than 16 seconds. Through this, Crash protected memory module that satisfies ED-112A was completed.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.73-80
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• 2014

A concrete cask is an option for spent nuclear fuel interim storage. A concrete cask usually consists of a metallic canister which confines the spent nuclear fuel assemblies and a concrete overpack. When the overpack undergoes a missile impact, which might be caused by a tornado or an aircraft crash, it should sustain an acceptable level of structural integrity so that its radiation shielding capability and the retrievability of the canister are maintained. A missile impact against a concrete overpack produces two damage modes, local damage and global damage. In conventional approaches [1], those two damage modes are decoupled and evaluated separately. The local damage of concrete is usually evaluated by empirical formulas, while the global damage is evaluated by finite element analysis. However, this decoupled approach may lead to a very conservative estimation of both damages. In this research, finite element analysis with material failure models and element erosion is applied to the evaluation of local and global damage of concrete overpacks under high speed missile impacts. Two types of concrete overpacks with different configurations are considered. The numerical simulation results are compared with test results, and it is shown that the finite element analysis predicts both local and global damage qualitatively well, but the quantitative accuracy of the results are highly dependent on the fine-tuning of material and failure parameters.