Dynamic analysis of bird strike effect on the polymeric composite fuselage nose

Abstract

A collision with a bird while in flight poses a substantial hazard to the structural integrity of aircraft. Due to these collisions, the damage occurs in the aircraft mostly in the engines, windshields, nose part, wing leading edges and other components. Reduction of bird impact is possible by carrying out suitable design and analysis using mathematical modelling and simulations. Hence, the focus of this numerical study is to analyze the high velocity impact loads from soft body projectiles on the composite structures using dynamic analysis. The analysis is carried out using LS-DYNA software. The nose part is considered as deformed target while the bird is assumed fluid during impact. The temporal pressure variations is measured on the curved plate using dynamic analysis for different bird velocities namely, 50 m/s, 100 m/s, 150 m/s, 200 m/s and 250 m/s with a nose cone thickness of 3 mm. Lagrangian method is used for finding temporal pressure variation. An increase in impact velocity of the impactor increases the impact pressure of the fuselage nose cone with respect to time.