This paper on "Application of LS-DYNA3D at Pilatus Aircraft Ltd." was presented at the NAFEMS World Congress on Design, Simulation & Optimisation: Reliability & Applicability of Computational Methods - 9-11 April 1997, Stuttgart, Germany.

Introduction to Paper

Pilatus Aircraft Ltd. in Stans is developing and producing powerful and sophisticated turboprop trainers PC-9 and PC-7 Mk II and is one of the world market leader for this type of aircraft. The winner of the United Stares trainer contract (JPATS) is based on the PC-9. In the next 15 years 700 PC-9 Mk II will be built by Beech under a license agreement with Pilatus.
Without any government funding, Pilatus invested more than 140 mill. CHF in the development of the PC-I 2, the largest single engine transport and executive aircraft. Actually, more than 60 airplanes have been delivered. For such types of aircraft the crashworthiness requirements are high and many tests had to be carried out for the certification.
Aircraft design involves the analytical solution of a wide range of problems in static and dynamic analysis using the finite element method. In order to solve problems that cannot be analyzed with an implicit code, Pilatus has installed LS-DYNA3D. The main application for this code is crash simulation, but it was soon realized that many other problems could efficiently be studied with LS-DYNA3D.