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Sabotage of passenger flights by terrorist bombs has prompted the airline industry and Federal Aviation Administration to search for novel and practical schemes for hardening aircraft components against explosions. Particularly needed is a luggage container capable of mitigating the detonation of a small bomb hidden inside luggage. Such a hardened luggage container will make it possible to raise the threshold level of the explosive detector machines currently in use.
SRI has developed and patented a hardened luggage container (HLC) that can foil sabotage by preventing catastrophic failure of the aircraft luggage compartment. The bomb explosion is mitigated by thoroughly containing the explosion debris while allowing a controlled venting of the detonation products. Controlled venting reduces the pressure outside the HLC and greatly extends the temporal duration and spatial extent over which the explosion impulse is applied to the aircraft structural shell. No shock loading occurs outside the HLC so the pressure inside the aircraft luggage compartment increases only slowly as the detonation products are venting out. Therefore, the HLC results in a relatively mild shock-free pressure environment in the aircraft luggage compartment.
The HLC is constructed in the same shape and with the same outside dimensions as standard containers to allow integration with the existing handling and loading procedures.
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