Investigation of aircraft wing design against bird strike

This study investigates the mechanical damage caused by bird strike on an aircraft wing with a NACA 2412 airfoil, manufactured from aluminum 6061 T6. Initially, a wing structure with a 1,2 mm thick skin without internal reinforcement was analyzed. The wing was considered stationary while the bird was modeled moving at a velocity of 38 m/s. In the first analyses, significant deformation occurred due to von Mises stresses exceeding the yield strength of the material in the wing skin. Subsequently, a wing structure with the same skin thickness but reinforced with internal ribs was evaluated. To prevent mechanical damage, the thicknesses of the skin and internal supports were varied as 1,3 mm, 1,4 mm, 1,5 mm, 1,8 mm and 2 mm in the analyses. Solid modeling was performed using MoI3D, and explicit finite element analysis was conducted with LS-DYNA software. The bird strike was modeled using the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) technique. The results indicated that the minimum skin thickness preventing mechanical damage was 1,4 mm. This study contributes to the assessment of bird strike resistance in aircraft wing design.