Patent 7931428 was granted and assigned to Sikorsky Aircraft on April, 2011 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
An aircraft payload retention system includes a cable, a brake assembly, a hollow crushable member and a hollow structural member. The hollow structural member is fixed adjacent an aircraft internal cargo bay. In response to a high-G condition, the payload may break free from a tie-down system and move forward. The brake assembly engages the hollow crushable member within the hollow structural member and begins to crush the hollow crushable member as the cable is pulled therethrough to dissipate energy of the payload into the structure of the aircraft to arrest forward movement of the payload toward the cockpit.