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 aa 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 benefit; 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.