Numerical research on the effect of aircraft leading-edge curvature on bird strike resistance

Abstract

Abstract With development of aviation industry, bird strike becomes great threat to flight safety. Numerical study has attracted widely attention due to high-cost experimental test. In this paper, Smooth Particle Hydrodynamic (SPH) couple with Lagrangian method is taken to study on the effect of both material and aircraft leading-edge curvature on bird strike resistance. Simulation result shows that fiber-metal material structure can offer greater impacting stiffness than aviation aluminum alloy materials. Besides, appropriate reduction of the curvature radius on the top of skin of leading-edge is beneficial to improve the structural stiffness, however, when curvature radius is too small, the impact resistance of the structure becomes worse due to matrix damage of material. The work in this paper may provide reference for the design of leading-edge structure.