Crashworthiness Enhancement of Aluminum Alloy Used for Leading Edges of Wing and Empennage Structures
Publication: Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 35, Issue 6
Abstract
The series aluminum alloys are preferred as a material for aircraft leading edges because they have high failure strain compared with other aluminum alloys. This parametric study on series aluminum alloy material parameters was carried out to identify the critical parameters that influence the energy absorption and load transferability during bird strikes. The soft-body impact simulation on an aluminum alloy leading edge was validated with an experiment test. Using commercially available finite-element software, a parametric study has explored the bird impact response of aluminum leading edges with different material parameters. The results showed that static yield limit, elastic modulus, strain-hardening modulus, and strain-hardening exponent are the most influencing material parameters to be considered to improve the crashworthiness performance of the aluminum alloy. Analysis of variance revealed that the most significant material parameters for the performance improvement of the wing leading edge against bird impact are the elastic modulus and static yield limit. After that, considering this material parameters as design variables, a gray relational analysis was carried out to simultaneously reduce reaction force at the spar region and wing center tip deformation. The material parameter values were selected from the optimization study, and a comparison analysis was carried out to study the improvement of the optimized material properties. The optimized aluminum alloy showed up to 25% improvement in energy-absorbing characteristics than a conventional aluminum alloy (AA 2024-T3). Fracture analysis was carried out to find the optimized aluminum alloy’s damage initiation and evolution parameters.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, and code generated or used during the study appear in the published article.
Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the contribution of the teams at CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore (specifically from Advanced Composites Division and Structural Technologies Division) and Gas Turbine Research Establishment, Bangalore for carrying out the bird strike testing which was referred to in this paper for validation. The support and encouragement of Director, CSIR-NAL during the course of the project is also gratefully acknowledged.
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Published In
Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 35 • Issue 6 • November 2022
Copyright
© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 12, 2022
Accepted: May 13, 2022
Published online: Jul 22, 2022
Published in print: Nov 1, 2022
Discussion open until: Dec 22, 2022
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