- About this Journal
- Abstracting and Indexing
- Aims and Scope
- Article Processing Charges
- Articles in Press
- Author Guidelines
- Bibliographic Information
- Citations to this Journal
- Contact Information
- Editorial Board
- Editorial Workflow
- Free eTOC Alerts
- Publication Ethics
- Reviewers Acknowledgment
- Submit a Manuscript
- Subscription Information
- Table of Contents
International Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 372167, 11 pages
doi:10.1155/2012/372167
High-Velocity Impact Behaviour of Prestressed Composite Plates under Bird Strike Loading
Department of Structures Engineering, Production and Aeromechanics, EADS Innovation Works, Willy-Messerschmitt-Straße, 81663 Munich, Germany
Received 11 October 2011; Revised 12 January 2012; Accepted 17 January 2012
Academic Editor: Mark Price
Copyright © 2012 Sebastian Heimbs and Tim Bergmann. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
An experimental and numerical analysis of the response of laminated composite plates under high-velocity impact loads of soft body gelatine projectiles (artificial birds) is presented. The plates are exposed to tensile and compressive preloads before impact in order to cover realistic loading conditions of representative aeronautic structures under foreign object impact. The modelling methodology for the composite material, delamination interfaces, impact projectile, and preload using the commercial finite element code Abaqus are presented in detail. Finally, the influence of prestress and of different delamination modelling approaches on the impact response is discussed and a comparison to experimental test data is given. Tensile and compressive preloading was found to have an influence on the damage pattern. Although this general behaviour could be predicted well by the simulations, further numerical challenges for improved bird strike simulation accuracy are highlighted.