Numerical Methodology for Aerostructures Hail Impact Damage Prediction

Abstract

The two numerical approaches for modelling of soft-body impact in Abaqus/Explicit have been applied in this work for prediction of high-velocity hail impact damage in aeronautical structures. The applied methods are the CEL (Coupled Eulerian Lagrangian) and SPH (Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics), while the impacted structure is a metallic slat structure. Comparison of the CEL and SPH methods has been performed by impact simulations at a rigid plate, aimed to validate the applied material model, and by simulation of the slat structure impact. Two material models have been applied to study the effect of high strain-rates at the damage process in the metallic structure. The first is the standard isotropic plasticity model that defines material failure based on the value of equivalent plastic strain. The second constitutive model in the analyses is the Johnson-Cook model that includes the effects of strain rate and temperature on the material failure process. The simulations have been stable, illustrating the robustness of Abaqus/Explicit in these highly nonlinear impact cases. Compared to the CEL, the SPH method is computationally more efficient.