SRI International is evaluating the ballistic effectiveness of fabric structures made from advanced polymers and developing a computational ability to design fragment barriers. In this reporting period, SRI performed full-scale fabric barrier tests on an aircraft fuselage at the Navy Air Warfare Center in China Lake, CA. The tests examined the effects of polymer material, number of plies, location of the fabric within the fuselage wall, and gripping arrangements. The results were very encouraging. For example, three piles of polybenzoxazole (PBO) Zylon woven fabric glued to the outboard side of the insulation packet and weighing only 0.05 g/sq cm (0.1 lb/sq ft) prevented a 166-g (0.37-lb) sharp-edged fan blade fragment impacting edge-on at 230 m/s (756 ft/s) from penetrating into the cabin. The absorbed energy of 4400 joules (3250 ft-lb) is nearly an order of magnitude greater than that absorbed by the unfortified fuselage wall. The results confirmed that high-strength polymer fabrics offer an extremely effective, low-weight solution for mitigating the effects of uncontained turbine engine fragements on commercial aircraft.
Full-Scale Tests of Lightweight Fragment Barriers on Commercial Aircraft
1999
20 pages
Report
No indication
English
Aircraft , Jet & Gas Turbine Engines , Air Transportation , Transportation Safety , Composite Materials , Armor , Fragments , Fuselages , Barriers , Ballistics , Commercial aircraft , Aircraft engines , Fan blades , Lightweight armor , High strength , Polymers , Fabrics , Glues , Containment , Zylon , PBO(Polybenzoxazole)
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