UC San Diego

Since 2009, research focused on damage formation of composite aircraft fuselage by High Energy Wide Area Blunt Impact (HEWABI) has been conducted at UCSD. As a major damage source to composite aircraft fuselage structures, HEWABI, caused by accidental contact by heavy ground service equipment (GSE), potentially leaves significant internal damage in multiple structural components with barely visible damage signs on the outside skin surface. Accounting for key structural components existing in real fuselage structures, specifically floor structures and continuous shear tie, a series of new 2nd generation large scale specimens were designed, fabricated, and tested. The objectives of the research described herein are to: (1) use of large-scale experiments to understand damage formation from HEWABI events near the floor structure location using the 2nd generation composite fuselage panel; of interest is examining how damage development is affected by the major changes from the 1st to 2nd generation panel design and boundary conditions, (2) investigation of C-frame failure both experimentally and analytically, and (3) evaluation of current FE modeling capability correlated with the 2nd generation HEWABI test results.