Investigation of External Airbags for Rotorcraft Crashworthiness

Airbags have commonly been implemented internally in automobiles for passenger safety, but they are considered for a variety of applications such as the landing system of the Mars Pathfinder to absorb the impact energy. This paper presents a feasibility study of an external airbag system for rotorcraft to improve the crashworthiness. It introduces a simple kinematic model for an external airbag system, which is validated against published experimental results of automobile airbags. Using a simplified helicopter geometry, several airbag system designs are investigated, and their potential benefits for crashworthiness are quantified. The results of this preliminary investigation show that an external airbag system is able to reduce fatalities, thereby significantly improving the crashworthiness of a rotorcraft.