Structural response of a blast loaded fuselage

The most important task in tests of resistance of aircraft structures to the terrorist threats is to determine the sensitivity of thin-walled structures to the blast wave load. For obvious reasons, full-scale experimental investigations are carried out exceptionally. In such cases numerical analyses are very important. They allow tuning modelparameters for proper correlation with experimental data. With this preliminary analysis experiment can be planned properly. The paper presents a summary of the results of numerical analysis of model of medium sizefuselage. Various manufacturing techniques are considered - the skin made of aluminum alloy (2024-T3) and the skins made of modern layered materials (GLARE) were compared. Characteristics of the materials used in FE simulations were obtained experimentally. Modelling of C4 detonation was also discussed. Studies have shown very strong sensitivity of the results to chosen numerical models of materials, formulations of elements, assumed parameters etc. Studies confirm also very strong necessity of the correlation of analysis results with experimental data. Without such a correlation it is difficult to talk about the validation of the results obtained from the "explicit" codes.