The Structures and Materials Research Center of the National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan (NAL) and Kawasaki Heavy Industories, Ltd. (KHI) conducted a vertical drop test of a fuselage section cut from a NAMIC YS-11 transport airplane at NAL vertical drop test facility in December 2001. The main objectives of this program were to obtain background data for aircraft cabin safety by drop test of a full-scale fuselage section and to develop computational method for crash simulation. The test article including seats and anthropomorphic test dummies was dropped to a rigid impact surface at a velocity of 6.1 m/s (20 ft/s). The test condition and result were considered to be severe but potentially survivable. A finite element model of this test article was also developed using the explicit nonlinear transient-dynamic analysis code, LS-DYNA3D. An outline of analytical method and comparison of analysis result with drop test data are presented in this paper.
