Acoustic Fatigue Research for Honeycomb Sandwich Structure with Impact Damage Based on Vibro-Acoustic Coupling Analysis

Abstract

Composite honeycomb sandwich structure is widely used in aircraft wing leading edge, rudder surface, engine fairing, etc. It is susceptible to strong aerodynamic noise and impact loads from birds, hails, and stones. Therefore, it is essential to evaluate the life of structure with sound and collision load. In this paper, an acoustic fatigue life evaluation method based on vibro-acoustic coupling with impact damage is proposed. A representative composite honeycomb sandwich structure is built up to implement the proposed method. Firstly, the low-velocity impact process is simulated by the finite element (FE) method. This analysis case is used to get the structure with damage and material degradation. Secondly, the FE model is linked with the acoustic indirect boundary element (BE) model. A white Gaussian noise load is applied to the coupled FE/indirect BE model, and the power spectral density (PSD) curve of the structural dangerous point is obtained by modal-based vibro-acoustic coupling response case and random post-processing analysis case. At last, the fatigue life of the honeycomb structure is computed by the PSD theory. The result shows that with the increase of the impact energy, the structural life under the same acoustic load decreases. This method reveals high computational efficiency and excellent feasibility. The analytical result has reference value for the acoustic and mechanical properties design of composite honeycomb sandwich structure.