Experimental research on impact loading characteristics by full-scale airplane impacting on concrete target

Highlights: • A test of a full-scale airplane impacting on a concrete target is carried out. • The reasonability of the modified Riera model is verified. • The value of the correction coefficient α for the large airplane is determined. • The rationality of a simplified method for calculating the impact force is verified. - Abstract: To investigate the impact loading characteristic during an airplane impacting process, an experiment of a full-scale airplane impacting on a movable concrete target was carried out, using a rocket slid propulsion facility. In the experiment, an on-off signal measurement system was used to monitor the airplane's impacting velocity; the total impacting process as well as the fragment dispersion of the airplane's wreckage were recorded by a high-speed photography system. Moreover, five accelerometers were installed on the reverse side of the target to measure its acceleration, from which the impact force-time history can be obtained. Moreover, two storage airborne accelerometers were placed on the airplane's tail to measure the acceleration history of the airplane, from which both the crushing force-time history and the crushing force distribution along the fuselage can be obtained. It is found that the measured impact force-time history is in good agreement with that calculated using the modified Riera impact loading model. This verifies the reliability of using the modified Riera model to predict the impact force acting on the target during the airplane impacting process, and the value of the correction coefficient α in the Riera model can also be determined. In addition, it is observed that, except at the initial moment, the ratio of the crushing impulse to the impacting one remains roughly a constant, which makes it possible to further simplify the Riera model by getting rid of the crushing force distribution curve.