BIRD STRIKE SIMULATION AND IMPROVED DESIGN OF LEADING EDGE STRUCTURE OF AIRCRAFT TAIL

In order to improve structural stiffness and to reduce the structural deformation of existing aircraft tail leading edge structures, a smoothed particle hydrodynamics method is used to numerically study bird-strike problems based on the strategy of reducing bird-strike energy. According to simulation results, the improved design of a tail leading edge structure is realized from two aspects of structure and material by adding a unidirectional inclined support plate structure and using fiber-metal composite materials. The simulation results show that: the unidirectional inclined support plate structure added at the leading edge reduces the bird-strike damage of the tail structure by evacuating the kinetic energy of the bird body, while using fiber-metal composite materials reduces the mass of the curved wing structure on leading edge by about 10%, improves the overall stiffness, and reduces the maximum deformation of the structure to 25% of the original configuration. It is found that reasonable layup design can significantly improve the bird strike performance of the tail leading edge structure of an aircraft by analyzing the failure mode and energy absorption effect of materials under different ply arrangements.