Design of aircraft structures against threat of bird strikes

In this paper, a method to design bird-strike-resistant aircraft structures is presented and illustrated through examples. The focus is on bird strike experiments and simulations. The explicit finite element software PAM-CRASH is employed to conduct bird strike simulations, and a coupled Smooth Particles Hydrodynamic (SPH) and Finite Element (FE) method is used to simulate the interaction between a bird and a target structure. The SPH method is explained, and an SPH bird model is established. Constitutive models for various structural materials, such as aluminum alloys, composite materials, honeycomb, and foam materials that are used in aircraft structures, are presented, and model parameters are identified by conducting various material tests. Good agreements between simulation results and experimental data suggest that the numerical model is capable of predicting the dynamic responses of various aircraft structures under a bird strike, and numerical simulation can be used as a tool to design bird-strike-resistant aircraft structures.