Damage sensitivity of a wing-type leading edge structure impacted by a bird

On the windward side of an aircraft, the components with higher probability of impact with birds are the wing-type leading edge structures, such as the wing and tail. A study on the damage sensitivity of a wing-type leading edge structure under bird strikes was presented in this paper. First, a bird strike test was carried out on a wing. The principles of the bird strike test equipment and method were introduced in detail, including the bird strike test system, bird projectile production process and data acquisition system. The dynamic strain measurement results, the high-speed camera videos, and the final deformation and damage morphology observations of the structure were obtained. Based on the coupled Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) - Finite Element Method (FEM), the commercial software PAM-CRASH was used to simulate the process of a bird strike with the wing. The good agreement between the finite element simulation results and the experimental results shows that the calculation method and the numerical model presented in this paper were reasonable. On this basis, wing-type leading edge structures can be designed by adding triangular support. The bird strike resistances of an original structure and improved structure were studied by numerical simulation. The calculated results show that the improved wing-type leading edge structure is less damaged than the original structure under bird strike. The improved leading edge structure satisfied the anti-bird strike airworthiness requirements, as the thickness of the triangular support was 1.2 mm, and the weight of the structure was reduced by 0.87 kg compared with the original structure. This indicated that the bird strike resistance of the improved structure is better than that of the original structure, and the improved design of the wing-type leading edge structure presented in this paper is reasonable.