Vertical drop test of a transport fuselage section located aft of the wing

A 12-foot long Boeing 707 aft fuselage section with a tapering cross section was drop tested at the NASA Langley Research Center to measure structural, seat, and occupant response to vertical crash laods and to provide data for nonlinear finite element modeling. This was the final test in a series of three different transport fuselage sections tested under identical conditions. The test parameters at impact were: 20 ft/s velocity, and zero pitch, roll, and yaw. In addition, the test was an operational shock test of the data acquisition system used for the Controlled Impact Demonstration (CID) of a remotely piloted Boeing 720 that was crash tested at NASA Ames Dryden Flight Research Facility on December 1, 1984. Post-test measurements of the crush showed that the front of the section (with larger diameter) crushed vertically approximately 14 inches while the rear crushed 18 inches. Analysis of the data traces indicate the maximum peak normal (vertical) accelerations at the bottom of the frames were approximately 109 G at body station 1040 and 64 G at body station 1120. The peak floor acceleration varied from 14 G near the wall to 25 G near the center where high frequency oscillations of the floor were evident. The peak anthropomorphic dummy pelvis normal (vertical) acceleration was 19 G's.