EMRTC To Study Aircraft Safety

SOCORRO -- New Mexico Tech's Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center (EMRTC) was awarded a $1.2 million contract by the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to begin developing a facility where researchers can study and analyze various effects and aspects of explosions which may occur in wide-body aircraft.

EMRTC recently teamed up with McDonnell-Douglas Corporation to start building a Re-Usable Blast Test Fixture--a large, cylindrical steel structure designed to simulate a portion of a wide-body aircraft fuselage--which eventually will be used to conduct tests with various energetic materials in hopes of developing more robust commercial aircraft, as well as evaluating methods of averting the "catastrophic failure" of airplanes that are subjected to explosions.

Van Romero, director of EMRTC, says construction is already underway to modify an existing test area--the Shock Tube Test Facility--to accommodate the needs of the new testing program. EMRTC's Shock Tube Test Facility includes a 20-foot-diameter by 140-foot-long shock tube. A portion of this tube will be converted into a mock-up of a fuselage of a wide-body aircraft.

"Inside that simulated fuselage, we'll be able to put in flight-weight components which are representative of what would normally be inside a commercial aircraft," Romero says. "We'll then be able to subject the components to blasts to see how they would react."

David L. Collis, associate director of applied technology at EMRTC, believes that specific components such as luggage containers and blow-out panels (which are designed to relieve over-pressure from explosions) will be among the first items to be tested at the new facility, starting as early as next summer.

"We'll also be able to validate computer codes related to various types of explosions, which will help industry as a whole design better airplanes," Collis adds.

"I would not be surprised if some of the initial testing at the facility centered around the analyses of recent catastrophic events, such as the explosion of TWA Flight 800 and the ValuJet crash," Romero notes. "I'm sure there are going to be specific tests done to answer some of the questions that remain unanswered."

However, Romero points out that proposals for funding EMRTC's new Re-Usable Blast Test Fixture were submitted to the FAA long before the recent airline tragedies occurred.

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(George Zamora)