Impact damage and failure response of various aircraft structures under high velocity loading

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Impact damage and failure response of various aircraft structures under high velocity loading

Gakwaya, Augustin / Saint-Marc, Jean-Charles F. / Bahri, Fatima Zohra El

The paper present results obtained using Abaqus/Explicit software for predicting the impact damage and failure response of various aircraft structures under high velocity impact loadings. Two types of problems are considered. The first concern the crash simulation of a generic airplane fuselage section and the second concern study of bird strike on typical wing leading edge using both metallic and composite structure. In the case of an aircraft fuselage hitting the ground, both vertical crash test and steep glide slope crash conditions are considered. The main objective was then to develop a methodology for performing such fast transient dynamic simulation tests and to determine in each case the residual velocity as well the various deformation modes associated with particular loading and crash conditions. The second example is concerned with bird strike on airplane wing leading edge built from multilayered fibersreinforced composite. Several features were used to optimize the results. A VUMAT subroutine containing all material properties and failure model equations describing the main damage mechanisms that can occur in the structure has been used. Contact definition is a critical issue in setting up an analysis definition of impact on a multilayered composite that can experience intra and interlaminar damage. Appropriate contact parameters have thus to be specified according to the model geometry and element type. A parametric study was considered by refining the model to study the convergence and establish accuracy of the process of modeling contact interaction between the wing leading edge and the projectile.