Impact Testing and Improvements in Aircraft Vulnerability Modeling for Range Safety

This paper begins with a summary of several key efforts by the US government to facilitate safe and efficient integration of air-traffic and space transportation activities in the aftermath of the Columbia accident. This paper describes impact tests sponsored by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to help improve the fidelity of computational models used to quantify the vulnerability of commercial transport aircraft to potential launch or reentry vehicle debris impacts. Specifically, the FAA and the US Department of Defense funded a small series of tests to investigate the influence of obliquity on the velocity required for compact metal fragments (steel spheres and cubes between 1 and 9 grams) to perforate thin sheets of aircraft grade aluminum. This paper summarizes the testing done to determine the minimum velocities required to perforate aircraft skin at zero and 75 degrees of obliquity. This paper also describes how these test results can be used to refine elements of the models used to quantify the vulnerability of typical commercial transport aircraft to potential debris impacts.