NASA Crashes Helicopter Test For Safety Study

By: Zain Nabi  |   August 23rd, 2013   |   News

Anybody who wants to know more about the researchers of NASA has to spend some smashing good time with its team members at the research center of NASA’s Langley in Hampton, Va.

 

They are the test engineers whose job is to design and construct a crash test helicopter. These engineers in late August made a 45-foot long helicopter and dropped it from about 30 feet above the ground. This was done to test the seats and seat belts of the helicopter and to collect the data from this crashworthiness. NASA in collaboration with the Navy, Army and Federal Aviation Administration, tested full-scale test of the Transport Rotorcraft Airframe at NASA Langley’s Landing and Impact Research (LandIR) Facility.

 

LandIR is a gantry of about 240-foot high, 400-foot long and has a history of almost 50 years. The Lunar Landing Research Facility of this gantry started out when Neil Armstrong and other astronauts learned to step on the moon. After that it became a main member of a crash test facility where test engineers could simulate the accidents of the aircraft.

 

The August test is one of the most difficult crash experiments at NASA Langle. “We have instrumented a former Marine helicopter airframe with cameras and accelerometers,” said lead test engineer Martin Annett. “Almost 40 cameras inside and outside of the helicopter will record how 13 crash test dummies react before, during and after impact. On-board computers will also record more than 350 channels of data.”

 

External cameras were used to capture images of helicopters that looked unusual. The technicians painted the one entire side of the helicopter white with black polka dots on it. According to them this was a photographic technique known as photogrammetric. Each black polka dot on white background represented a data point. The high speed cameras that were fixed on the helicopter could take 500 images per second track each polka dot, so after the test crash the researchers could easily plot and see the fuselage buckled, bent, cracked or collapsed under crash loads.

 

The researchers for the first time also used a motion sensor of a well known video game. “We installed an Xbox Kinect inside the helicopter,” said Justin Littell, test engineer. “We want to see if it can be used as an additional instrument to track dummies’ movements.

 

The result of this test will be used to improve the performance and efficiency of rotorcraft. Also by these crash tests the researchers can increase the industry knowledge and create more crash models that are used to design a better helicopter.