This is topic Jet Crashing into Concrete Barrier in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-05-2004, 12:31 AM:
 
Check out this test of a jet crashing into a concrete barrier. Supposedly the jet turned to dust. The dust was later sold to morons on eBay which ended up paying for the whole test.

Download here
1.4 MB

Cool.
 

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Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 10-05-2004, 12:59 AM:
 
You'd probably turn to dust too if you hit a concrete wall at 733 feet per second.
 

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Posted by Dick Vaughan (Member # 540) on 10-05-2004, 03:40 AM:
 
That is a terrible thing to do to an F4 Phantom II. May those test people rot in hell!
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 10-05-2004, 04:55 AM:
 
If any of them were inside the aircraft at the moment of impact, there won't be much left of them to rot.
 

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Posted by Gracia L. Babbidge (Member # 582) on 10-05-2004, 10:09 AM:
 
So nice to see what tax dollars get spent on.
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 10-05-2004, 11:58 AM:
 
Well, at least we know that nuclear reactor containment walls designed to that specification will not be breached by an F-4 or any other aircraft weighing about that much at that speed. Fully loaded for combat, an F-4 weighed about as much as a short DC-9 airliner (about 78,000 lbs).

When the USAF Thunderbirds (based right here at Nellis AFB) switched from the F-4 to the T-38 years ago I remember the squadron commander at the time mentioning that it took quite a bit of differences training to fly their routines in the new type. The entire formation of T-38's weighed about as much as one fully-loaded F-4.

One of my favorite aviation otaku T-shirts has a line drawing of the aircraft with this inscription:

quote:

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McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom
World's Greatest Distributor of MiG Parts

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Dick, I suppose this might be a marginally better fate than to be cut up and melted down into beer cans at Davis-Monthan!
 

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Posted by Jeremy Fuentes (Member # 2135) on 10-05-2004, 12:08 PM:
 
I saw that on HBO. It was on the Indian Point special. Supposedly the test walls were thicker than the actual walls at the reactor. Also the tests were being done involving a part of the power plant that would not have the most damaging effect. I cant remember what part they said would cause the most damage, but it wasnt the big tanks. Actually another area that can be easily broken into on foot, rather than with a plane,will cause even more damage. Its where they have the spent fuel cells that have to remain stored for a few hundred years after being used.
 

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Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 10-05-2004, 12:41 PM:
 
There was a test done in Britain sometime in the '80s, where a train was crashed into one of the flasks they use to transport spent fuel rods, but I can't find the film of it on-line anywhere.
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 10-05-2004, 12:53 PM:
 
We're doing those tests here too, since Yucca Mountain, 90 miles up US-95 from here, has been designated by the rest of the country to be the depository for all of the high-level nuclear waste in the US. We'll have trainloads of the stuff coming through starting in a couple of years. The hole they're digging for it is supposed to be good for at least 10,000 years. With the typical construction quality seen here in Southern Nevada, I'd have to see it to believe it. Somehow I don't think I'll be around.
 

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Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 10-05-2004, 01:31 PM:
 

quote: Paul Mayer

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Somehow I don't think I'll be around.

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Hopefully, due to "natural causes", rather than an accident.

The test footage reminded me of some other cinematographers at the Nevada test site who risked (and may have eventually lost) their lives in photographically documenting nuclear tests:

http://www.vce.com/atomic.html

quote:

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Atomic Filmmakers
(Behind the Scenes)
Following World War II, many of the Combat Cameramen who risked their lives to capture the images of War, enlisted in Shooting the Cold War - photographing Atomic Tests!

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quote: Jeremy Fuentes

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I cant remember what part they said would cause the most damage, but it wasnt the big tanks. Actually another area that can be easily broken into on foot, rather than with a plane,will cause even more damage.

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I always think its really convienient that they air useful information like this. If i were a terrorist, I'd be pissed if i wasted a good airplane by ramming it into any part of a reactor other than the weakest, most damage inducing part. Thank god for HBO. Newspapers are good at this too. After the Atlanta Olympic pipe bombing, you couldn't open a paper without learning exactly how to build your own pipe bomb at home. Fun for all!
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 10-05-2004, 04:23 PM:
 
Not to worry John. Though I intend to live forever (so far, so good), I still don't think I'll be around to check on that 10,000 year guarantee they want us to believe.

The part I especially don't buy is the amount of cooling that the underground facility will require for the entire time, to carry away the heat generated by all that "hot" (physically as well as radioactively) stored material. I suppose it will be the ultimate form of job security for generations of operating engineers, keeping after all those air handlers.

Scott, that crash test you wrote of happened at Edwards AFB, about four hours drive from here. Spectacular yes, but also a mostly failed experiment. Some footage of it was used in one of the IMAX films from that time. The main test was for a fuel additive (long string polymers) designed to keep jet fuel from forming explosive vapors until just before entering the engines. But the test pilot allowed an undamped Dutch Roll oscillation to develop just before touchdown, which put the aircraft into an unplanned position when it slid through the "rippers" that were positioned to slice open only the fuel tanks. Had it hit correctly, it would have been a chance to see if the additive worked, i.e. allowed the fuel to burn but not explode. As it turned out, the damage was too extensive in all the wrong places and they had a fireball anyway.

The cabin was full of instrumented crash dummies and cameras to record the post-crash conditions of a survivable crash landing. But the fuselage was badly compromised by the rippers due to the off-angle touchdown, resulting in deformations to the cabin that made the crash not so survivable. They still salvaged some good data out of all of it, but not as much as they wanted, nor what they planned for.

The aircraft would have eventually been chopped up and smelted anyway. It was (and I think still is) the world's largest RC flying model.

[ 10-08-2004, 05:47 PM: Message edited by: Paul Mayer ]
 

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Posted by Mike Pennell (Member # 1692) on 10-05-2004, 04:57 PM:
 
I grew up a block away from the bone yards at Davis-Monthan. It's an awesome sight to behold with all the history in those planes.
 

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Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 10-05-2004, 08:34 PM:
 

quote: Gracia L. Babbidge

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So nice to see what tax dollars get spent on.

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Yes, verifying the theory behind safety critical construction methods is certainly a waste of money.

You should see all of the electronic monitoring hardware that was abused and destroyed while testing to ensure that safety critical systems would behave as designed and intended.

I feel like I've been wasting my life helping to protect the public!
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-05-2004, 10:40 PM:
 
Holy shit. That video was pretty cool. Even more cool than the video I shot this summer where one of my friends nearly blew himself up with fireworks.
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 10-05-2004, 10:51 PM:
 
I want to see the video of the tests aerospace companies do when they launch frozen chickens out of an air cannon into a spinning jet engine to test how it might withstand a real bird strike while in flight!


 

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Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 10-05-2004, 11:34 PM:
 
I've got some of those tapes from the 70's. I actually can't remember much more recent footage either, too many animal rights issues.
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 10-05-2004, 11:38 PM:
 

quote: Randy Stanky

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I want to see the video of the tests aerospace companies do when they launch frozen chickens out of an air cannon into a spinning jet engine to test how it might withstand a real bird strike while in flight!

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Thats something that any Jet Engine has to withstand and I want to say that I've read somewhere that the number of frozen birds fired at a running test engine is 5 without the engine destructing (not that its goin to like it much though!). There are a number of manufacturers which now use composite fan blades on passenger jet engines, General Electrics GE-90 engine for the 777 is the best example. This engine has the largest turbofan of any jet engine made. The Nacelle covering at the front of the engine is larger in diameter than the fusalage of a 737.
From the GE engine site:
"During this intensive test, the engine ran for approximately 60 hours at triple red-line conditions (maximum fan speed, maximum core speed and maximum exhaust gas temperature) to evaluate the engine at its operational limits. The test is designed to demonstrate the engineÂ’s capability beyond the most extreme operating conditions."
Web Site is at:
http://www.geae.com/engines/commercial/ge90/world_record_holder.html

I don't think I'd want to be within 5 miles of that engine test stand with it running triple red line.

Mark
 

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Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 10-05-2004, 11:48 PM:
 
AFAIK, GE, Rolls Royce, Pratt & Wittney and others are all using 'synthetic birds' now. Cruelty to semi-frozen animals and all.
 

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Posted by Greg Davis (Member # 2687) on 10-06-2004, 12:23 AM:
 
"All we do crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see... dust in the wind... all we are is dust in the wind."

And bored scientists... what did they think? It was going to run for mayor of Pitkin County, Colorado? And what was with the big crosshairs? Like you could miss a 20 foot concrete wall with a jet on a darn track. Your tax dollars at work, gentlemen.
 

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Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 10-06-2004, 12:27 AM:
 
Since it was the concrete was under test, and not the aircraft's ability to withstand destruction, the markings on the concrete would be quite important in post impact analysis.

Markings on the aircraft were there likely to verify the projectile's trajectory and to help in calculating (the lack of) energy absorption of the concrete, using measurements from high speed and frame rate film.
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 10-06-2004, 01:38 AM:
 
Not frozen chickens guys! Might as well throw a bowling ball in there while you're at it. The chickens (or gelatin blocks or whatever they're using these crazy PC days--jeez the damn birds are dead already! ) are quite thawed when they get fired out of the air cannon. I've seen slomo footage of one of the latest big engines "eating" a chicken, so they were still using birds as late as 10 years ago or so. Can't remember which engine (PW-4000? Trent 800 or 900? GE-90?). Yeah Mark, the GE-90 is quite the machine. They've had one up to around 105,000 lbs of thrust on the test stand!

There is an old joke about firing frozen chickens for a windshield test. The technicians couldn't figure out why the laminated glass kept failing. Finally the designers of the test sent a note up saying, "Next time, use thawed chickens."

Engine and windshield tests are done over a range of bird sizes and speeds like a 1-pound bird at 200 knots. Or was it a 200-pound bird at 1 knot?

Another test that's fun to watch is a "blade off." They rig one blade on the front fan to be blown off by a pyro charge while the engine is turning at takeoff RPM. The engine case must contain the resulting unbalanced rotor. Watching the slomo you'd think the case was made of rubber. Most impressive!

Those full-up engine stress tests are also done for ETOPS (Extended Twin OPerationS) certification, i.e. losing an engine on a twin-jet while over the ocean and having to run the remaining engine at max everything until landfall. The current max time certified is 208 minutes--a nice long time to think about how good your ditching, evacuating, and treading water skills are. I like the alternate meaning for ETOPS better (Engines Turn Or People Swim).
 

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Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 10-06-2004, 07:53 AM:
 
What does that mean, max time certified is 208 minutes? Surely a twin can fly indefinitely on one engine if it's certified to cross oceans. Not much choice over the mid-Atlantic! Or is that how long one may opt to keep going, passing up airports with suitable runways in favor of landing at one of their own choosing?
 

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Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 10-06-2004, 08:09 AM:
 
Nope, 208 minutes is the amount of time until you start placing bets on how long before the remaining engine blows itself up.

Bypassing an airport on one engine would generally only happen if a pilot was more comfortable with landing at another nearby airport, or could avoid extra maneuvering (extra turns, rapid descent) if they were to bypass the closest and go to the next closest.

In most cases 3.5 hours is long enough to make it to, or return to, the closest airport since the likelihood of engine failure decreases with time.

In the event that it'll take longer to reach land you'll find that you won't be able to get a blanket since the flight attendants will be sowing them into parachutes. While they're getting off the plane you can hope that the aircraft has enough altitude to slowly descend at a lower cruise power, to avoid destruction of the remaining engine, and still make land fall.

Of course it's not a huge concern since an engine is far more likely to fail in the first few minutes of flight than it is later in flight. A fuel system problem is probably far more likely than an engine failure later in flight, in which case it doesn't matter how long the remaining engine can last at triple red.
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 10-06-2004, 09:00 AM:
 
Has there ever been a case of an airliner carrying fare-paying passengers having to ditch in the sea, purely as the result of mechanical engine failure? By this I mean all the engines failed internally - there wasn't any external cause such as fuel starvation, an explosive device detonating on board or the aircraft being struck by an object in flight.

Coincidentally, my local public library was selling off this book for 50p the other week. The British public must have a pretty morbid fascination with accidents, as it had been so well read it was practically falling to bits! Among all the stories about planes being blown up, shot down, running out of fuel, disintegrating in midair collisions and so on, it made the point that at the time of writing (which admittedly was 14 years ago), no revenue earning EROPS flight had ever been downed by engine failure. The author argued that this was lulling airlines into a false sense of security where engine reliability was concerned, with the result that they were attempting to use aircraft for longer distance hauls than they were really designed to cope with. He cited the case of one charter airline which was even flying 737s from Vienna to Brazil with a refuelling stop on Ascension Island.

Related to which, an outfit called Air Transat is now flying once a week from my local airport, Newcastle, non-stop across the pond to Toronto. It's astonishing that a small regional airport can now support direct intercontinental services, IMHO. Furthermore a return ticket costs little more than a full-price train fare from Newcastle to London! Presumably smaller twinjets are now reliable enough and have the range to operate intercontinental flights on a regular basis and more economically than bigger aircraft, which is certainly good news as far as I'm concerned. As long as the engines don't break down, of course...
 

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Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 10-06-2004, 10:02 AM:
 
Ooooh, you haven't lived until you've flown Air Transat!

I wonder if they still give out / sell little (knock off) Lego models of their aircraft. They come in handy when you want to demonstrate to the passengers who don't have window seats what parts of the aircraft (namely one of the engines) the maintenance crew is replacing.
 

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Posted by Don Sneed (Member # 955) on 10-06-2004, 10:53 AM:
 
I'm dispointed, I wanted to see the final results, how large was the hole in the concrete, and view the plane after the dust has settle down...notice the plane did not come through the other side of the concrete...whoaaa weeee, after seeing this clip, if this would have been real,the people inside would never knew what they hit...
 

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Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 10-06-2004, 11:51 AM:
 
They'd think they hit since the first officer would be screaming that!
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 10-06-2004, 02:12 PM:
 

quote:

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They [Air Transat's Lego models] come in handy when you want to demonstrate to the passengers who don't have window seats what parts of the aircraft (namely one of the engines) the maintenance crew is replacing.

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At least they don't make the passengers fix the engines using bits of Lego...

I'll have to find an excuse to visit Toronto sometime to see if they really are that bad!
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 10-06-2004, 05:57 PM:
 
At the beginning of the ETOPS era, I think the first widely used time limit was 120 minutes. In addition to what Daryl wrote, the time limit also applies to flight planning. You must plan your route such that you are never more than the time limit away from a suitable airport at single-engine cruise speed. ETOPS 120 works well for crossing the North Atlantic since great circle routing (and the NATS--North Atlantic Track Structure) between the east coast of the US and Europe easily fits within the 120 time limit.

For other routes (like over the Pacific) ETOPS 120 meant having to fly longer than great circle distances in order to hug the coasts and meet the time limit. Hence the push for ever higher ETOPS limits. Some of the engines on today's jets are considered reliable enough to allow ETOPS 208. At this point I think most are certified up to ETOPS 180. Normally an engine/airframe combination must have a proven track record to be granted this, but some, like the B-777, were certified to ETOPS 180 right from day one without an operational trial period, based on previous engine experience on other airframes. With ETOPS 208 there are very few city-pairs left in the world that can't be flown on a great circle. The present long-distance champ is Singapore Air's flight 21 Newark, NJ to Singapore--18 hours 35 minutes of daily non-stop service using an A340-500! Depart EWR 11:00pm tonight, arrive SIN 5:35am Friday. Can you say "flat ass"?

There have been a couple of total flameouts in jets over the years, but none due to engine failure AFAIK. Do a search on "Gimli Glider" (sorry Daryl! ) for the story of an Air Canada B-767 that became a glider one day in July 1983. Not to worry, the amazing story has a happy ending.
 

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Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 10-06-2004, 06:03 PM:
 
OK...I just GOTTA chime in here on this thread:

Y A W N !

Paul, I think you and Daryl should get a room!

>>> Phil
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 10-06-2004, 06:17 PM:
 
Did someone say something, or was that a buffalo fart?
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-06-2004, 06:49 PM:
 
OK Phil. You start a thread that is completely entertaining. And every post had better be freakin' awesome or you're BANNED!
 

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Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 10-06-2004, 06:51 PM:
 
No problem Paul, I didn't want to bring up talk of side slips in a 767 -- fun!

If I remember correctly one of the Discovery channels (Civilization maybe) has a "Mayday" episode about it.

Somewhere I've got a picture of this aircraft taxiing at YYZ.
 

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Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 10-06-2004, 07:59 PM:
 
Joe, WTF stepped on your tail? I didn't say ANYTHING about the premise of the thread... I enjoyed it.

I was commenting on the anal-retentive stuff from Daryl and Paul.

OBTW: Lose MOST of your sig...

>>> Phil
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 10-06-2004, 08:16 PM:
 
Does "anal-retentive" really have a hyphen in it?
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-06-2004, 08:18 PM:
 
I know Phil. I'm just challenging you to start a thread and make it so that boring people like Paul and Daryl don't start posting in it.

Lose most of my sig? Why on Earth would I want to do that? It would lessen my point.
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 10-07-2004, 01:48 PM:
 

quote:

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Do a search on "Gimli Glider" (sorry Daryl! [Embarrassed] ) for the story of an Air Canada B-767 that became a glider one day in July 1983. Not to worry, the amazing story has a happy ending.

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That book I bought included an account of the incident. Can't help thinking that it might not have been a happy ending if it wasn't for the pilot's knowledge of gliders and of the existence of that disused airfield.
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 11-08-2004, 12:24 PM:
 
Some additional info for Leo's next trip to The Great White North... It seems Air Transat managed to run one of their A330's completely out of fuel while out over the pond in August. The crew bungled a fuel leak diagnosis (aided and abetted by some ambiguous Airbus indications for the situation) and basically pumped all of the fuel overboard through the leak. Things then got very quiet.

But the captain did manage to glide from 18,000' and 65 miles out and safely deadstick the airplane into the Azores. Everyone (all 306) made it OK.

Air Transat has offered $12,500 to each of the 293 pax in compensation--90 of them have accepted so far. Of course there is a lawsuit now in the works.
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-08-2004, 01:30 PM:
 
Gee, thanks for the morale boost Paul! And I read that post only seconds after completing my online check-in for Northwest flight 55 tomorrow. Anyhow, if it should turn into an aluminium shower distributing bits of DC-10 all over the Atlantic or north-east Canada I'll be sure to go down with a beer in one hand and a shit lit novel about air disasters in the other...
 

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Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 11-11-2004, 01:54 PM:
 
Air Transat Flight 236 incident:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20041020/news_1n20azores.html

quote:

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October 20, 2004

MONTREAL – The Canadian pilot who was hailed as a hero for gliding a packed, powerless airliner to an emergency landing in the Azores three years ago made mistakes that allowed all the jet's fuel to drain out through an engine leak, a Portuguese aviation agency said Monday.

Portugal's Aviation Accidents Prevention and Investigation Department said the leak was caused by improper replacement of a Rolls-Royce engine on the Airbus 330 jet operated by Canadian charter flight operator Air Transat.

Capt. Robert Piche avoided calamity for the Air Transat flight's 306 passengers and crew when he flew the big jet for 65 miles without power, gliding through darkened skies to make a landing-gear-crunching landing at the Lajes Airport in Terceira.

The only injuries – to 16 passengers and two crew members – came during the evacuation of the plane on the Lajes runway.

Piche said the report represents the final chapter in the incident and would not comment further.

Piche's deft command of the flight's last 19 minutes, when the jet was without engine power, has been cited as one of the finest piloting achievements in modern aerospace.

But in its 103-page report on the "all engines-out landing," the agency suggested Piche's heroics might not have been needed had the crew followed proper procedures in detecting and dealing with a fuel leak in the right engine.

The investigating agency said the crew did not correctly evaluate the engine-leak situation, and then did not follow the proper checklist.

Instead of shutting down the fuel lines leading to the right engine, the crew cross-fed fuel from the left-engine tanks to the source of the leak. That allowed all of the jet fuel to drain.

"The flight crew did not recognize that a fuel leak situation existed and carried out the fuel imbalance procedure from memory, which resulted in the fuel from the left tanks being fed to the leak in the right engine," the agency said.

The 103-page report details the events that led up to the Aug. 24, 2001, flight from Toronto to Lisbon, which took off with more than enough fuel to reach its intended destination.

Problems began days earlier when Air Transat's maintenance crew replaced the jet's right engine with one that had not been retrofitted for an updated configuration.

Air Transat technicians did not review a Rolls-Royce service bulletin that would have indicated a hazard in mismatching fuel and hydraulic lines, the agency said.

As a result, a fuel inlet tube on the newly installed right engine failed after chafing and hard contact with a hydraulic line, the agency said.

About four hours into the flight, the crew noticed unusual oil readings in the right engine, and then a fuel imbalance between the left and right inner-wing tanks.

The flight crew diverted to the Azores as the fuel problem worsened. About 150 miles from Lajes, the right engine flamed out. The left engine followed suit 13 minutes later.

Flying without engine power, the passenger cabin dark save for emergency lighting, Piche brought the Airbus down to a hard, tire-shredding landing.

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quote:

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Air Transat Flight 236
By Devon Leslie
It had been a relatively calm flight on the morning of August 24th, 2001. Air Transat Flight 236 out of Toronto was heading to Lisbon, Portugal to deliver a new batch of vacationers. The Airbus 330, cruising at 39,000, sped through the atmosphere at .84 Mach while her passengers slept. She was the pride of the airline, and she let everyone know as the whir of her Rolls-Royce engines sang to the occupants. Only the aircraft fuel computer knew the dark secret brewing on the right wing. A secret that had been interpreted as a fuel imbalance in the right tank. It was only a matter of time before the secret would shake every occupants' courage to their knees.

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quote:

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Pilot hero of Azores jet landing made errors-report
Mon Oct 18, 2004 04:47 PM ET
By Robert Melnbardis
MONTREAL, Oct 18 (Reuters) - The Canadian pilot who was hailed as a hero for gliding a packed, powerless airliner to an emergency landing in the Azores three years ago made mistakes that allowed all the jet's fuel to drain out through an engine leak, a Portuguese aviation agency said on Monday.

Portugal's Aviation Accidents Prevention and Investigation Department also said improper replacement of a Rolls-Royce (RR.L: Quote, Profile, Research) engine on the Airbus 330 jet, which was operated by Canadian charter flight operator Air Transat, led to the fuel leak.

Air Transat is owned by vacation travel company Groupe Transat A.T. Inc. (TRZ.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) , while European aerospace group EADS (EAD.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) owns Airbus.

Captain Robert Piche avoided calamity for the Air Transat flight's 306 passengers and crew when he flew the big jet for 65 nautical miles (120 km, 75 miles) without power, gliding silently through darkened skies to make a landing-gear-crunching landing at the Lajes Airport in Terceira.

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