Bird Impact Analysis of a Typical Transport Aircraft Wing

Bird striking event is one of the most dangerous risks to the safety of aircrafts. Although most of the bird strike events involve relied small birds which do not cause risk, there is a possibility of severe damage to critical aircraft components such as shield of the wind, leading edges, empennages, engine structure and front, rear blades. In this aspect, a numerical study can help in identifying the parameters which influence the behaviour of the aircraft structure during bird impacts. The current project involves impact analysis carried out at the leading edge of the wing of a large passenger aircraft model. The project work focuses on developing a model to simulate a bird impact analysis on the leading edge of the wing using the explicit dynamics method in Ansys 15.0 workbench. Explicit dynamics simulates the response of structures to loadings involving short duration and severe loading which cause large material deformation. Explicit dynamics can be classified into Eulerian, Lagrangian and smooth particle hydrodynamics method. Lagrangian method is associated with the material of the structure and therefore each node of the mesh follows the material under motion and deformation. Smooth particle hydrodynamics method is a meshless Lagrangian technique where the bird model deformation is covered fully without the distortion of mesh by the interfacing particles are occurred independently. A large-scale passenger aircraft wing is used as a reference wing required for this analysis. The wing and the bird are modelled using unigraphics NX 10 software. Numerical simulations were performed in the commercially available explicit solver Ansys AUTODYN. The important parameters of the bird model include mass, structure, velocity of bird, angle of impact, and impact location. The bird model was assigned to impact the wing at three different velocities. The deformation, stress and strain values for different velocities are compared. Results of impact simulation give an understanding of the failure of leading edge of the wing under bird strike, where the influence of parameters such as angle of impact, impact velocity, and the dynamic behaviour of aircraft wing leading edge can be effectively understood. Reliability, safety and airworthiness of the aircraft can be increased by adopting new high strength and lightweight materials.KeywordsBird wingAircraft wingFormattingStyleStylingInsert.