Impact Tester Device

NASA’s Langley Research Center has developed a portable device to simulate low-velocity impacts on a material or structure. As composite materials are highly susceptible to damage caused by low-velocity impact, they must...

Inside NASA’s White Sands Test Facility: How High-Speed Cameras Support Hypervelocity Experiments

At NASA’s White Sands Test Facility, Donald Henderson and his team spend much of their days shooting projectiles at 15,700 miles per hour....

Puncture-Healing Thermoplastic Resin Carbon-Fiber Reinforced Composites

NASA’s Langley Research Center has developed carbon fiber reinforced composites with self-healing properties. The initiation and propagation of damage to carbon...

Cooling Test Samples With a Combined Convective and Conductive System to Rapidly Reach 77 K

In this innovation, a team successfully developed and implemented a combined convective and conductive cooling system that permits rapid cooling. Using...

Data Acquisition System Helps NASA Improve Aircraft Crash Performance

Data acquisition system DTS (Diversified Technical Systems) Seal Beach, CA 562-493-0158 www.dtsweb.com Aircraft impact testing and hard landing tests are an important part of...

Ruggedized Displays Improve Automotive Safety

Navigation and entertainment screens in cars are becoming ever-larger and, in some cases, the central control point for drivers and passengers. Many manufacturers consider using glass to cover the...

Prototype Recovers Lost-At-Sea Images

New hardware built by research engineers at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) is helping NASA retrieve experimental images otherwise lost at sea. The hardware weighs less than two pounds, and serves...

High Speed Cameras for Non-Destructive Testing

In the “old” days when high speed cameras used film, there was a very definite period of time in which the event one wished to record had to occur. This was between the point at which the film...

Linear Guide Systems Streamline Aircraft Seat Assembly and Operation

When airline passengers travel in coach class, expectations are fairly low with regard to comfort. For example, most seats only offer two positions: straight for takeoff and landing, and a slight recline for the journey. Coach seats are relatively simple and lightweight structures compared to their more sophisticated counterparts in business class, first class, and super first class. Whereas a coach seat weighs approximately 100 pounds, seats in higher classes weigh 200 to 300 pounds each, depending on their features.

Onboard LED Lighting System

EYE Lighting International of North America (Mentor, OH) recently introduced of its high-G, high-intensity onboard LED lighting system for high-speed crash test photography.

Optimizing Finite Element Material Models in a Crash Test Dummy

Finite element representations of crash test dummies are widely used in the simulation of vehicle safety systems. The biofidelity of such models is strongly dependent on the...

Automotive Engineering: The Future is Today

The Ford Focus Electric is the industry’s first car to feature 100 percent sustainable clean technologies in interior materials, including seat fabrics with Unifi’s REPREVE®-branded fiber made...

Measuring Multiple-Axis Position of Multiple Points at Data-Sampling Rates of 10-20 kHz

Multi-point, multi-axis measurement of position can be valuable in a variety of applications that require high-speed data acquisition and a high degree of...

Data Management Speeds Up Simulation of Crash Test Dummy Models

The idea for the automotive crash test dummy first came to life in the 1950s when U.S. Air Force flight surgeon Col. John Stapp realized that more of his fighter pilots were dying...

High-Speed Cameras Assist in Crash Sled Testing

The Kettering University Crash Safety Center (Flint, MI) conducts vehicle subsystem tests using a pneumatic deceleration sled. The research and testing includes frontal, rear, or side impact...

Apparatus for Hot Impact Testing of Material Specimens

An apparatus for positioning and holding material specimens is a major subsystem of a system for impact testing of the specimens at temperatures up to 1,500 °C. This apparatus and the...

Race Car Manufacturer Uses Finite Element Analysis to Simulate Chassis Performance

The monocoque chassis of a Formula 1 race car is a sandwich structure, made of high-performance carbon-epoxy composite face sheets and an aluminum or aramidic...

Composite-Fuselage Concept for Greater Crashworthiness

A continuing program of research is directed toward the development of crashworthy composite-material fuselages for small aircraft. These fuselages are required not only to withstand...