Research on crashworthiness simulation and optimization of an agriculture and forestry aircraft fuselage frame

Crashworthiness of civil aircraft has received increasing attentions over recent years and the drop and crash properties of aircraft can be improved greatly by appropriate crashworthiness design. The simplified truss frame model of an agriculture and forestry front fuselage structure and its crashworthiness test results with the drop test bed are introduced. The truss, frame dynamics characteristics are evaluated with LS-DYNA3D, a business finite element software, and the coincidence of simulation and test results shows that similar software can satisfy the basic requires of the aircraft crashworthiness research. At last for better drop and crash properties the simplified truss frame is optimized with genetic algorithm (GA), which integrates the LS-DYNA3D finite element model validated by drop test. By replacing some steel tubes with graphite-epoxy tubes, the crash facture mode of optimized design is controlled and the crashworthiness of the agriculture and forestry aircraft is improved effectively.