When amphibious aircraft, ships, and other equipment perform tasks on the water, especially in winter or in low-temperature environments such as high latitudes, high altitudes, and polar regions, they will inevitably encounter icing problems which can adversely affect the safety and performance of these devices. In order to study the mechanical properties of freshwater and seawater ice, this paper tests and analyzes the tensile and shear strengths of static ice and proposes the test principle of shear and tensile strengths of static ice. It then designs and builds the corresponding test equipment, prepares the freshwater and seawater ice samples, and completes the tests. Experiments yield the shear and tensile strengths of freshwater and different seawater samples at various temperatures, and the temperature–strength curves are then drawn. The findings can provide technical support and valuable reference for anti-icing and de-icing design of water vehicles in low-temperature and hostile ocean environments.

As technology continues to leap forward and innovations advance, the systems of civil aircraft are becoming increasingly sophisticated and complex. Accordingly, there is a rising amount of information to be processed by pilots in the cockpit, increasing their cognitive burden, which significantly threatens the safety of flight. Thus, designers have formulated cockpit layout principles relating to importance, frequency of use, functional grouping, and operation sequence on the basis of ergonomics, which can effectively reduce the cognitive burden for pilots. The degree to which the cockpit layout of a model conforms to the four design principles can indicate its ergonomic design level. In accordance with the concepts of the above four cockpit layout principles, evaluation methods for determining their respective conformity to the four design principles were proposed in this paper. These methods use the operational sequence of cockpit system controls used in the normal flight mission of the actual aircraft type as the evaluation data source. Subsequently, the total evaluation results for cockpit layout were obtained using the weighted accumulation method. Lastly, the process for evaluating the cockpit layouts of civil aircraft was illustrated using the cockpits of the A320 series and B737NG series as examples. Based on the final evaluation results, the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed evaluation method was verified.

This research investigates the effects of freezing temperature and salinity on the adhesion shear strength of amphibious aircraft tires under static icing. It found that the lower the freezing temperature, the greater the ice adhesion shear strength, and the higher the salinity of the water sample, the lower the ice adhesion shear strength. This is related to the thickness of the brine layer at the ice-tire substrate interface; the temperature decreased, the brine layer became thinner, and, accordingly, the adhesion shear strength increased. This paper analyzes the problem of brine precipitation during seawater freezing and its influencing mechanism on the ice adhesion shear strength. In addition, it also found that the lower the temperature, the greater the growth rate of the ice adhesion shear strength. When the salinity in different ranges changed, its influence on the adhesion shear strength was different. When the salinity of the water sample is close to 0%, a small change in the salinity will cause a large change in the ice adhesion shear strength. When the salinity is large, the change of salinity has a weaker influence on the ice adhesion shear strength. This research provides a strong reference for the design and study of amphibious aircraft tires.

The numerical accuracy of drop process simulation and collision response for drones is primarily determined by the finite element modeling method and simplified method of drone airframe structure. For light and small drones exhibiting diverse shapes and configurations, mixed materials and structures, deformation and complex destruction behaviors, the way of developing a reasonable and easily achieved high-precision simplified modeling method by ensuring the calculation accuracy and saving the calculation cost has aroused increasing concern in impact dynamics simulation. In the present study, the full-size modeling and simplified modeling methods that are specific to different components of a relatively popular light and small drone were analyzed in an LS-DYNA software environment. First, a full-size high-precision model of the drone was built, and the model accuracy was verified by performing the drop tests at the component level as well as the whole machine level. Subsequently, based on the full-size high-precision model, the property characteristics of the main components of the light and small drone and their common simplification methods were classified, a series of simplified modeling methods for different components were developed, several single simplified models and combined simplified models were built, and a method to assess the calculation error of the peak impact load in the simplified models was proposed. Lastly, by comparing and analyzing the calculation accuracy of various simplified models, the high-precision simplified modeling strategy was formulated, and the suggestions were proposed for the impact dynamics simulation of the light and small drone falling. Given the analysis of the calculation scale and solution time of the simplified model, the high-precision simplified modeling method developed here is capable of noticeably reducing the modeling difficulty, the solution scale and the calculation time while ensuring the calculation accuracy. Moreover, it shows promising applications in several fields (e.g., structure design, strength analysis and impact process simulation of drone).

For civil high-speed rotorcraft designed to operate at specific cruising altitudes, this study proposes nine structural design schemes for pressurized cabins. These schemes integrate commonly used materials and processing technologies in the aviation industry with advanced PRSEUS (Pultruded Rod Stitched Efficient Unitized Structure) technology. An analysis of the structural composition reveals that frames constitute 8–19% of the total structural weight, while stringers and beams make up 15–50%, and skins account for 11–25%, with thicknesses ranging from 1.0 mm to 2.0 mm. The separating interface of the pressurized cabin contributes 4–29% of the total structural weight. The weight distribution of each component in the pressurized cabin structure varies significantly depending on the chosen materials and processing technologies. Utilizing the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), along with Gray Relational Analysis (GRA) and Dempster–Shafer (D-S) evidence theory, this study compares the simulation results of the nine schemes across multiple dimensions. The findings indicate that the configuration combining 7075 aluminum alloy and T300 composite material has the greatest advantages in terms of the high structural reliability of the configuration, light weight, mature processing technology, and low production cost. This comprehensive evaluation method quantitatively analyzes the factors influencing the structural configuration design of the pressurized cabin for civil high-speed rotorcraft, offering a valuable reference for the design of similar structures in related fields.