New technologies to enhance rotorcraft crash safety

Abstract

Crash safety of rotorcraft can be significantly enhanced using several new crashworthiness technologies under development. These technologies include actively controlled subsystems such as external airbags, crashworthy seats, landing gears, and crash load limiting elements for the transmission and rotor systems. These actively controlled subsystems can be integrated at the rotorcraft system level using an Active Crash Protection System (ACPS) that can sense an impending crash event and control the subsystems to enhance occupant crash safety. This paper presents the results of research and development efforts for various actively controlled crashworthy subsystems and their integration at the rotorcraft system level. The paper also addresses the potential benefits of these crash safety technologies using the Crashworthiness Index (CI) as a metric. CI scores calculated for deploying the new crashworthiness technologies individually and as an integrated system are also presented and compared to rotorcraft without these technologies.