Impact Assessment on Safety Structures and Aircraft Components  

Southwest Research Institute® (SwRI®) conducts a wide variety of safety-related impact tests for many applications, projectiles, and test specimens: aircraft components, bird impact resistance, engine failure fragments, and foreign object damage to many different structural and shielding components. SwRI maintains three ballistic gun systems that launch a large variety of projectile types and shapes at speeds from 10 ft/s to over 2000 ft/s. The Large Compressed Gas Gun Facility is capable of performing bird impacts from 240-knot commercial aircraft FAA certification to 550+ knot Air Force canopy qualification testing. Projectiles, test specimens and sabots are often designed, constructed and tested at SwRI to meet the specific requirements of clients. A large suite of state-of-the-art instrumentation and computer simulation codes support the experimental facilities.

Capabilities

• Launch of projectiles from 0.1 to 15 inches in diameter (larger if required)
• Impact speeds from 10 ft/s to over 2000 ft/s
• High-speed digital imaging of impacts up to 100,000,000 frames per second
• Nicolet Multipro© high-speed data acquisition up to 200 MHz
• Test fixture fabrication
• Institute ISO-compliant QA
• Computer impact simulation
• Temperature control from –50°F to 150°F
• Gelatin and bird projectile testing
• Sabot design

65-lb fragment-simulating projectile about to impact Lexan shield design

F16 canopy deflecting under impact by a 4-lb projectile at 550 knots

Experience

• FAA bird strike certification testing at 240–280 knots
• Air Force bird strike qualification testing at 240–550 knots
• Engine containment shield tests with irregularly shaped projectiles
• Pressure measurements at impact point; correlation to simulations
• Impacts into Space Shuttle tiles with lightweight foam projectiles
• Impacts into personal protection shields, simulated plant equipment
• Shield and airframe design for impact survivability

Facilities

• Ballistics ranges with three compressed gas guns and over 20 barrels
• Three fully equipped instrumentation suites (one mobile)
• Target area for large components
• Mobile gun platform for easy targeting (yaw, pitch, waterline and buttline)

	One-third of a jet engine compressor packed in a sabot for launching. Complex sabots are often needed to launch irregularly shaped projectiles.
Civil aircraft fuselage undergoing temperature-controlled bird strike testing. The insulated hood, hanging from the crane, covers the fuselage for cooling or heating to the desired test temperature and is raised moments before the projectile is fired at the target.

This flyer was published in April 2009. For more information about Impact Assessment on Safety Structures and Aircraft Components, contact Scott A. Mullin, (210) 522-2340 or Donald J. Grosch, (210) 522-3176, Mechanical Engineering Division, Southwest Research Institute, P.O. Drawer 28510, San Antonio, Texas 78228-0510.

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