- Thread starter
- #41
drgondog
Major
Chris - BTW an arcane branch of structures was first applied to your beloved bird, the Blackhawk. I can't remember his name but the guy Bell hired (a very smart Brit) to do 'survivavbilty' on the Bell competition for the AH-60 was whicked away by Hughes but not before I learned a little bit.
The spec called for crew survivability in an autorotate crash of 2G's (IIRC) and the problem was to UNWIND classic structures of desing to a higher load limit. Simply we had to design the bottom of the ship, (and by definition the bottom of the AH-60) to elastically deform (fail) 'outside-in' and absorb the energy of the crash - protecting the crew section while screwing up the bottom of the bird.
A sloppy 'cushion' of collapsing beer cans.
I say the 'first' only because it was totally unknown as an applied structures science at Hughes, Bell, Boeing, Kaman and Sikhorsky because we had to search hard to find John ?? (CRS). Obviously the art was known in UK but not applied to helicopers.. Maybe used elsewhere but first applied in states in airframe biz at Bell and Hughes in early 1970's.. I suspect even the auto business should have been studying it
The spec called for crew survivability in an autorotate crash of 2G's (IIRC) and the problem was to UNWIND classic structures of desing to a higher load limit. Simply we had to design the bottom of the ship, (and by definition the bottom of the AH-60) to elastically deform (fail) 'outside-in' and absorb the energy of the crash - protecting the crew section while screwing up the bottom of the bird.
A sloppy 'cushion' of collapsing beer cans.
I say the 'first' only because it was totally unknown as an applied structures science at Hughes, Bell, Boeing, Kaman and Sikhorsky because we had to search hard to find John ?? (CRS). Obviously the art was known in UK but not applied to helicopers.. Maybe used elsewhere but first applied in states in airframe biz at Bell and Hughes in early 1970's.. I suspect even the auto business should have been studying it