NORDAM Aircraft Windshield Bird Strike Simulation

DRD has performed finite element analysis to simulate a bird strike on an aircraft windshield for the NORDAM Group’s Transparency Division. The NORDAM Group is recognized worldwide as an industry leader in the manufacture, repair and overhaul of aircraft bonded-honeycomb components, fan/thrust reversers, engine components, interiors and aircraft transparencies.

The NORDAM Group’s Transparency Division provides commercial and regional airlines a single-source supplier for development, manufacture, repair and overhaul of aerospace transparency components.

This graphic shows the left windshield assembled in the cockpit portion of the airframe.

DRD constructed the windshield finite element model starting from geometry in UNIGRAPHICS. We used layered shell finite elements, which account for offset between the nodes and the shell midsurface.

One of the first steps in the analysis was to perform normal modes analysis of the windshield. The mode shape associated with the windshield first natural frequency is shown in this animation.

The bird constitutive model was a critical aspect of the bird strike simulation. These animations demonstrate preliminary simple cube and ellipsoid versions of the bird constitutive model, which exhibits fluid-like behavior.

After verifying satisfactory behavior for the windshield and the bird models separately, we combined the two models to perform the bird strike simulation.

This animation shows the bird impacting the windshield. The bird disintegrates during impact.

The model provided detailed stress and displacement distributions during the bird strike such as the animated deformation shown here.

LS-DYNA 3D layered shell element enabled DRD to examine stresses at each windshield ply. This graphic provides stresses in one of the windshield’s inner plys.

ANSYS/LS-DYNA software made it easy for DRD to perform the bird strike analysis with and without windshield static internal pressure. An implicit-explicit finite element solution was required to account for the static internal pressure.

This graphic shows stress contours due to static internal pressure before bird impact.