One of the most critical air transportation issues is the passengers' protection during collision and impact events that must be absorbed in a controlled way in order to reduce damages. The capability of an aircraft to eliminate injuries in relatively mild impacts and to reduce severe effects on occupants in critical crashes is called crashworthiness. The crashworthiness is the ability of a structure to protect occupants during dynamic events. It is usually measured by the capacity of a structural system to dissipate kinetic impact energy by itself, by means of a controlled and predictable deformation aimed to minimize stresses and accelerations on passengers during a crash. In aeronautical applications, the crashworthiness is dominated by the crash response characteristics of typical fuselage sections (including occupant/seat restraint system), and the crashworthiness evaluation mainly includes fuselage structural response evaluation and occupants’ level of injury evaluation. This special issue consists of four papers, starting with a review of the crashworthiness design and evaluation aspects of civil aircraft fuselage structures, followed by a review of the impact response characteristics and the crashworthy design principles for composite fuselage structures. The third paper addresses the issue of the lack of standard experimental procedures to assess the crashworthiness of composite structures whereas the fourth paper describes a numerical model for the simulation of the side impact of an aircraft passenger.

中文翻译：

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民用飞机结构耐撞设计与评估


最关键的航空运输问题之一是在碰撞和冲击事件期间对乘客的保护，必须以受控方式吸收这些事件，以减少损失。飞机在相对轻微的撞击中消除伤害并在严重事故中减少对乘员的严重影响的能力称为耐撞性。耐撞性是结构在动态事件中保护乘员的能力。它通常是通过结构系统自身消散动冲击能的能力来衡量的，通过受控和可预测的变形来最大程度地减少碰撞过程中乘客的压力和加速度。在航空应用中，耐撞性以机身典型断面（包括乘员/座椅约束系统）的碰撞响应特性为主，耐撞性评价主要包括机身结构响应评价和乘员损伤程度评价。本期特刊由四篇论文组成，首先回顾了民用飞机机身结构的耐撞设计和评估方面，然后回顾了复合材料机身结构的冲击响应特性和耐撞设计原则。第三篇论文解决了缺乏评估复合材料结构耐撞性的标准实验程序的问题，而第四篇论文则描述了用于模拟飞机乘客侧面碰撞的数值模型。