To attend the next generation of aircraft, which will demand higher levels of crashworthiness performance and occupant safety, the development and validation of reliable simulation tools is a very important task. Through efficient use of finite element simulation technologies, development costs and certification tests can be reduced, while meeting aircraft safety and crashworthiness requirements. The present work presents an overview of aircraft crash and occupant simulation, highlights selected topics of the finite element crash technology, review recent applications, and identify future challenges of the technology.

Advances in aircraft crashworthiness can be achieved by the development of crashworthy composite fuselage concepts. To attend the design requirements that will be established by the next generation of general aviation aircraft, the present work presents an innovative composite fuselage section concept that besides its added crashworthiness features represents a great potential for weight and manufacturing costs reduction. Recently the NASA AGATE "Advanced General Aviation Transport Experiments" published the results of its crashworthiness research program, which had the objective to develop and validate advanced crashworthiness concepts and design methods for general aviation [3-5]. The following themes were covered by the project, which was focused on a composite aircraft concept: inflatable restraints, computer modeling, energy absorbing subfloors, seat certification, aircraft airbag sensors, energy absorption of composite sandwich panels, thermoplastic energy