Experimental studies of damage to typical aircraft structure subjected to discrete impact

The effect of impact damage is tightly relevant to structure survivability, experimental study on impact damage of structures is one of the most important measures that supply data for the evaluation of structure survivability. In this paper, some experimental studies on the damage of typical aircraft structure subjected to discrete low velocity impact are performed. Plexiglas (MDYB-3) is a typical material usually used in aeronautical engineering structures such as aircraft canopy windshield. For this aeronautical structure, preliminary studies on the relations among impact energy, impact damage and remaining strength of structure subjected to impact loading are conducted experimentally. In the impact experiments, free-fall dropping dart device with four different kinds of dart heads are used for the plate specimen of MDYB-3, the impact damages produced by different dart heads are figured by damage depth and damage area. Remaining tensile strength and fatigue life tests are implemented and the relationship between remaining strength of structures and impact damage is studied and discussed. Results obtained from these experiments are basic to further analysis and evaluation on structure survivability.