Landing Gear Laboratory of the Institute of Aviation in Warsaw performs the final work on the selection of impact energy absorbing material for the return capsule with samples from the space (see picture). Project co-financed by the EU under SPACE action is carried out under the name RASTAS SPEAR. In this project participate also companies and research centers from France, Belgium, Czech Republic, Russia, Greece, Switzerland and Italy.
In the Landing Gear Laboratory has been designed, tested and calibrated air gun dedicated for the crash tests of energy-absorbing materials. At this phase of research, after the static tests and tests of low speed collisions, from several pre-selected materials were selected two (rigid polyurethane foams). They were tested in a configuration which simulates a collision with the target speed. In May 2012 will be carried out the final crash tests using a super high speed camera (340 000 frames/second) and image analysing software TEMA Motion. The results of experiments are constantly analyzed and compared with computer simulations obtained from calculations made using LS-DYNA system.
The final step of testing will be the full-scale crash test of the 5 kg weighing object with an 115 mm thick energy-absorbing material.
Special air gun for crash tests of impact energy absorbing materials.
Impact test of energy-intensive material – still from a movie made using fast imaging camera.
