Finite element modeling of wing bird strike

Abstract

Bird strike events are a potential dangerous problem faced by flight safety nowadays. These events are usually simulated through numerical approaches due mainly to the technical difficulties and high costs associated with experimental tests. The consequences of bird impact can be severe and, therefore, the aircraft components have to be certified for a proven level of bird impact resistance before being put into service. Bird impact poses serious threats to military and civilian aircrafts as they lead to fatal structural damage to critical aircraft components. The exposed aircraft components such as windshields, radomes, leading edges, engine structure, and blades are vulnerable to bird strikes. Among a large number of structural tests an aircraft structure needs a certification requirement for a proven level of impact resistance against bird impacts. Bird strike experiments are very expensive and henceforth explicit numerical modeling techniques have grown importance. Parts of aircraft construction are intensively vulnerable to damage during flight by bird impact. The theoretical approach and results of numerical simulations of dynamic response of the wing loaded by the bird impact are presented. The numerical simulation is carried out using smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method running in the nonlinear explicit finite element code ANSYS AUTODYN. The focus is given to the validation of the stress, strain and deflection of wing on the impact zone. The dependency of given parameters on the variation of ellipsoidal bird aspect ratio, impact velocity and wing design details was discussed. As well, some results of experimental data were given. The behavior of aircraft leading edge against high speed bird impact was successfully simulated and the effect of various parameters on its dynamic response was studied. Numerical model was validated with published experimental results and further employed to investigate the influence of various parameters on dynamic behavior of aircraft leading edge.