Abstract
This study assesses the bird strike resistance of the satellite communication (SatCom) radome of a medium altitude, long endurance (MALE) remotely piloted aircraft system (RPAS), which is designed as a lightweight sandwich structure with thin quartz fibre composite skins and a cellular honeycomb core. In order to perform accurate, predictive numerical bird strike simulations, the building block approach was applied, involving extensive experimental characterisation and model validation of the materials and structures from simple coupon level up to full-scale radome level. Coupon tests of the quartz fibre composite skin material under high-rate dynamic loading revealed significant strain rate effects, which needed to be taken into account in the simulation model in order to predict the structural response under high-velocity bird strike loading. In summary, this work presents a systematic and detailed approach for obtaining validated modelling methods for high-velocity impact analyses, which could be used efficiently for various design and parameter studies during the development of the SatCom radome.
Highlights
Aircraft radomes are electro-magnetically transparent, structural enclosures of radar antennas that can both be found on commercial as well as military aircraft (Fig. 1)
Within this study the target was to develop bird strike simulation models of a satellite communication (SatCom) radome made of composite sandwich structures in the commercial finite element software Abaqus/Explicit
The building block approach proved to be a meaningful method to develop and validate predictive modelling methods supported by tests with increasing complexity
Summary
Aircraft radomes are electro-magnetically transparent, structural enclosures of radar antennas that can both be found on commercial as well as military aircraft (Fig. 1). Being forward-facing structures, bird strike is one of the major design-driving load cases for such radomes and bird strike resistance for specific impact masses and velocities needs to be shown before allowance for operational use [1] This has typically been done experimentally in the past and is more and more replaced by sufficiently validated numerical impact simulations today [2-4]. If the level of accuracy in the test-simulation correlations on the lower levels was high, the accuracy of the numerical prediction of the full-scale structure can be expected to be high This building block approach was applied for the bird strike simulation study of the SatCom radome and is presented in detail as follows. The models have been validated step by step to enable accurate predictions of the global response and design studies of the SatCom radome under bird strike loading
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