Hybrid approach in bird strike damage prediction on aeronautical composite structures

This paper deals with the problem of numerical prediction of bird strike induced damage on aeronautical structures. The problem of soft body impacts has been tackled by applying a hybrid Eulerian Lagrangian technique, thereby avoiding numerical difficulties associated with extensive mesh distortion. Eulerian modeling of the bird impactor resulted in a more realistic behavior of bird material during impact, which has lead to an enhanced response of the impacted structure. The work presented in this paper is focused on damage modeling in composite items of aeronautical structures. The bird impactor model and damage modeling approaches have been validated by comparison with experimental gas gun results available in the open literature, while the complete damage prediction procedure has been demonstrated on a complex airplane flap structure finite element model. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.