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50th AIAA/ASME/ASCE/AHS/ASC Structures, Structural Dynamics, and Materials Conference<br>17th AIAA 2009-2575

4 - 7 May 2009, Palm Springs, California

Experiment and Numerical Simulation of a Full-Scale


Aircraft Windshield Subjected to Bird Impact

Shuhua Zhu1, Mingbo Tong2, Yuequan Wang3


Key Laboratory of Fundamental Science for National Defense-Advanced Design Technology of Flight Vehicle,
Nanjing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China

Both experiment and numerical simulation of bird impact on aircraft windshield was
studied. The finite element model of bird impact on the windshield was established to predict
the damage initiation and propagation of the windshield after bird impact via the nonlinear
finite element method, combined with the user-defined materials subroutine (VUMAT) of
the ABAQUS/Explicit software. In the model, an elastic-plastic and a nonlinear
viscoelasticity constitutive model were adopted to define the material constitutive response of
bird and windshield, respectively. The shear failure criteria and the tensile failure were
selected to identify the damage of bird and windshield, respectively. The corresponding
elements will be removed when the materials meet the above failure criteria. The supporting
structure of the windshield glass was modeled with skins and rubber gaskets herein instead
of modeled with the boundary condition directly. The analysis results include the
instantaneous deformation of bird and windshield, the damage modes of the windshield,
displacement curves and strain curves of the measured points on the windshield, which
agree well with the experimental results.

I. Introduction

T HE bird impact against aircraft structures can cause catastrophic damages. The statistical data shows that the
probability of the windshield and cockpit impacted by birds is about 21.4%, which is the biggest probability
comparing with the other parts of the aircraft. The records also present that the impacted windshield and cockpit are
much more dangerous than the other parts.
It is unpractical to avoid the bird-strike accident, but important to take into account the windshields capability
against bird-strike. It is necessary to carry out the full-scale bird-strike experiments in order to determine the degree
of damage after bird-strike, to evaluate the dynamic failure position for the windshield and to obtain the critical
speed of the bird for the structure configuration, support boundary and material properties of the windshield in a
structural design. The bird-strike experiment costs a lot of money and human resources, and usually, is not directly
instructive to the design of the new windshield. The reason is that most of the bird impact tests only record the data
measured from some specific surface points on the windshield specimens rather than the total deformation response,
especially, the instantaneous failure characteristics of the structure during the impact process. With the rapid
development of computer and finite element method, the numerical analysis has been increasingly adopted to
analyze bird impacts at locations and in conditions without considered in the experimental tests, as well as to
evaluate the effectiveness of design modifications to improve the structural response and even for simulations on
design hypotheses, before carrying out any preliminary test.
In the paper, both experiment and numerical simulation of bird impact on aircraft windshield are presented. The
numerical simulation is carried out based on ABAQUS/Explicit, a nonlinear finite element program. In the
simulation, the bird adopts an elastic-plastic model with shear failure, verified in this paper with an instance in the
other literature. The windshield is modeled in a nonlinear viscoelasticity constitutive material, which is implemented
by the user-defined subroutine VUMAT within ABAQUS/Explicit. A comparison between the simulation results
and the experiment data shows a good agreement.

1
PhD Candidate, Aerospace Engineering College, MB 301, 29 Yudao Street.
2
Professor, Aerospace Engineering College, MB 301, 29 Yudao Street.
3
PhD Candidate, Aerospace Engineering College, MB 301, 29 Yudao Street.
1
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Copyright 2009 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. All rights reserved.
II. Experiment

A. Test Facility and Method


The bird impact test facility is made up of a fire system, a support system, a measurement system and a
recording system. The construction 1 is shown schematically in Fig. 1. The fire system includes the air compressor,
gas container and the air cannon. The measurement system includes the displacement transducer, dynamic strain
gauge and high-speed camera. The displacement transducers, which are installed under the windshield, are adopted
to measure the displacement of the
windshield. The dynamic strain gauge is
used to record the dynamic strain response
of the windshield and the strain sensors are
fixed on the outer surface of the windshield.
High-speed cameras, which are placed at
different angles, are employed to take
photographs of the transient deformations
of bird and windshield during the impact.
In the bird impact test, chook are used
instead of birds. A dead chook without
head and legs is wrapped with plastic sheet,
bounded with cotton line in order to avoid (1) air tank and pressure control system (2) gun tube (3) bird shot
the birds spread in flight, and then inserted with gasket (4) bird shot gasket (5) bird shot gasket stop (6) velocity
in a foamable polymer bottle. The bird measurement device (7) bird shot without gasket (8) displacement
driven by the high pressure gas is fired out and strain sensors (9)windshield (10)windshield fixture (11)video
on the windshield, which is fixed on the camera (12)data acquisition system
test bench. Figure 1. Schematic diagram of bird impact facility.

B. Test and Results


In the experiment, 5 bird impact tests are carried out on 3 windshields, which is a 16 mm thick polycarbonate
shell. The bird mass is 1.8 kg and the impact velocity is between 345 km/h and 380 km/h. The windshield is
clamped on the support structure with the actual assemble angle, which is shown in Fig. 2.
The locations of the displacement transducers and strain sensors are presented in Figure 3. The B1~B9 are the
locations of displacement transducers and the C1~C5 are the locations of strain sensors. The impact point is the C2
point in Fig. 3.
The experimental results are listed in Table 1. According to the 5 test results of the windshields impacted by the
high speed bird, it is observed that the windshield is in a good condition without obvious damage when the bird
speed is smaller than 345 km/h. However, the windshield is damaged seriously, perforated and the broken pieces of
the windshield materials flying all around, when the bird speed is larger than 365 km/h. In conclusion, for the
windshield and its support structure the critical failure velocity of the bird is between 345 km/h and 365 km/h in the

Figure 2. Windshield on the test bench.


Figure 3. Location of displacement
transducer and strain sensor

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condition of the current impact point (C2).
In the test, the process of bird-strike on the windshield is photographed with the high-speed cameras, of which
the exposure speed is 3000 pictures per second. It can be seen that the windshield has large deformation and is
accompanied with strong shocks. The failure of the windshield does not occur at the initial period of bird-strike, but
after some time due to the bending deformation.
Table 1. Experimental results of the bird impact on windshields tests
Windshield No. Impact No. Velocity / km/h Damage status

1# 1 345 No failure
1# 2 380 Fragmented
2# 1 365 Fragmented
3# 1 340 No failure
3# 2 360 Fragmented

III. Finite Element Analysis Model

A. FE Model of Bird
1) Bird Geometric Model
The mass of bird is 1.8kg (4 lb) in order to keep
consistent with the real bird in the test. The bird is
modeled within a Lagrangian approach as a cylinder
with hemispherical ends 2, of which the size is shown in
Fig. 4. The model consists of 5916 solid elements (C3D4)
with an average element length 12~13 mm.
2) Bird Material Constitutive Equation
The characterization of the bird material response is
a major issue and difficulty in bird impact analysis3,4.
The real bird has bones, blood and flesh. It is very Figure 4. Bird geometric model.
difficult to define the bird material constitutive response.
The bird model has been regarded as elastic material,
elastic plastic material, or a jet of fluid by some authors.
For example, Johnson4, Hanssen5 and Brockman6,7 used
a polynomial equation of state to represent the bird
material constitutive response. Bai8, Wan Xiaopeng9 and
Airoldi10 used the elastic-plastic material to represent the
impacting bird.
The paper adopts the elastic-plastic model with
failure criteria. The shear failure criteria are used in the
present model. The shear failure model is based on the
value of the equivalent plastic strain at element
integration points. The failure is assumed to occur when
the damage parameter exceeds one11. The damage
parameter, , is defined as Bird
= ( 0 + ) f
pl pl pl

, in which 0pl is an initial value of the equivalent plastic Plate


strain, pl is an increment of the equivalent plastic
strain, fpl is the failure strain and is equal to 1.25 in this
model. The summation is performed over all increments
in the analysis. When the shear failure criterion is Figure Figure 5.
3. Mesh of bird strike
Displacement on ansensor
and strain aluminum plate.
location.
satisfied, all the stress components will be set to zero
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and the material fails. By default, if all of the material points at any section of an element are failed, the element is
removed from the mesh.
3) Verification of Bird Model
To verify the bird material model mentioned above, the instance in Ref. 8 was analyzed. The bird impacts on an
aluminum plate in size of 410mm500mm10mm. The impact angle between the bird speed vector and the
aluminum plate is 30 degree. The impact velocity is 91.1 m/s. The boundary condition is fully clamped supported.
The bird model including FE model and material model built above is used in the simulation. The key parameters
used to specify the bird material properties are shown in Table 2. The material of aluminum plate is LY12-CZ, of
which the parameters are shown in Table 210. The mesh of both bird and plate is shown in Fig. 5. The simulation
results and the experimental results reported in the literature8 are shown in Fig. 6 and Fig. 7. Figure 6 shows the
comparison of displacement-time curve of the center of the plate. Figure 7 shows the comparison of displacement -
the plate width curve at the time 1.24ms after the beginning of the impact. It is obviously that the simulation results
agree well with the experimental results in Fig. 6 and Fig. 7. So it can be concluded that ABAQUS/Explicit can
simulate bird strike and the bird model built above is appropriate for the following dynamic response analysis of
bird strike against the windshield.
Table 2. Material properties
Elastic Modulus Yield Stress
Material Poisson Ratio Density /kg/m3 Failure Strain
/MPa /MPa
Bird 68.9 0.49 938 0.006894 1.25
LY12-CZ 71000 0.3 2780 690 0.3

Figure 6. Displacement-time curve of the center of Figure 7. Displacement along the width of the plate
the plate. at 1.24ms after the beginning of the impact.

B. FE Model of Windshield
1) Windshield Modeling
In the Fig.1, it shows the supporting structure of the windshield glass. The FE model of the windshield only
takes into account the glass in usual to simplify the modeling process. The supporting structures are simplified by a
corresponding boundary condition of the glass.
In order to take into account the impact of the skin, frame and rubber gaskets on the dynamic response of
windshield glass, the complete windshield with glass and the surrounding structures are modeled herein (Fig. 8). All
the elements are eight nodes solid elements (C3D8R) in ABAQUS/Explicit. The boundary of the surrounding
structure is simplified as a fixed support.
2) Constitutive Equation of Windshield

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The material of the windshield studied in this model is YB-3 PMMA material, of which the dynamic mechanical
behavior from the quasi-static low strain ratio (  = 10 s ) to the impacting high strain ratio (  = 10 s ) is 4 1 5 1

investigated by Wang12. It is shown in Ref. 12 that YB-3 PMMA is a viscoelastic material which is sensitive to
strain ratio. For the problem of large deformation under impact load, a linear viscoelastic model is not suitable in the
analysis. The material can be well described with the following non-linear viscoelastic constitutive equation, named
Zhu-Wang-Tang (ZWT) constitutive equation as Eq. (1). The ZWT model is composed of a nonlinear spring and
two Maxwell elements as shown in Fig. 9.
t t
= E0 + + + E1  exp(  exp(
t t
2 3
) d + E 2 ) d (1)
0
1 0
2
The first three terms in Eq. (1) describe the nonlinear elastic equilibrium response, in which E0, , are the
nonlinear elastic parameters. The first integration term in Eq. (1) describes the viscoelastic response for low strain
rates, in which E1, 1 are the elastic modulus and relaxation time of the corresponding Maxwell element I
respectively. The second integration term describes the viseoelastic response for high strain rates, in which E2, 2 are
the elastic constant and relaxation time of the corresponding Maxwell element II respectively.
As the windshield is modeled in a three dimensional elements, Eq. (1) is to be modified into a three-dimensional
form13, 14 as shown in Eq. (2).
t t
Ekl
Ekl


t t
S ij = E0 [ A] Ekl + Eij + Eij + E1
2 3
[ A] e
1
d + E 2 [ A] e
2
d (2)
0
0

In Eq. (2), Sij and Eij are the second Poila-Kirchhoff stress tensor and Green strain tensor respectively. [A] is
three-dimensional isotropic elasticity matrix, defined as Eq. (3), in which is the Poisson ratio.
1 0 0 0
1 0 0 0

1 1 0 0 0
[ A] = (3)
(1 + )(1 2 ) 0 0 0 (1 2 ) 2 0 0
0

0 0 0 (1 2 ) 2 0

0 0 0 0 0 (1 2 ) 2

In Eq. (2), the viscoelastic stress tensor of low strain rate at the time t is defined as Eq. (4). Then, the stress
tensor at t+t can be written in Eq. (5). Equation 6 can be considered 13, 15, 16 when t is small enough. So the
Equation (5) becomes Eq. (7). The stress tensor increment can be written as Eq. (8).

t
Ekl

[ A]
t
Qij = E1
1t
e
1
d (4)
0

t + t t t
E
t + t
E
t + t

1 t + t 1 1 1
(5)
t + t t + t

= E d = e d
kl kl
Qij 1
[ A] e E 1
[ A] e

0 0

t + t t t
E kl E kl E kl
= = (6)
t
t t t t t t

E kl Ekl
t t
E kl
[ A]
1 t +t 1 t
1 t + t
1 1 1 1
Qij =e E( e d + [ A] e d ) = e Qij + E [ A] (1 e ) (7)
t
1 1 1

t
0 t

t t t
E kl
1 t + t 1t 1 1 1
Q = Qij
1
Qij = E [ A] 1 1
(1 e ) (1 e )Qij (8)
t
In the same way, the viscoelastic stress tensor for high strain rate and its increment can be written as Eq. (9) and
Eq. (10) respectively.
t

E kl

2
(9)
t
2t
Qij = E 2
[ A] e d

0

t t
Ekl
t

2
Q = E2 2 [ A]
2
(1 e
2
) (1 e
2
)Qij (10)
t

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Based on the above discussion, the increment of the second Poila-Kirchhoff stress tensor, Sij, in time t is defined
as Eq. (11). The recursive equation of the stress tensor is written as Eq. (12).
t t t t
Ekl Ekl
t t

S ij = E0 [ A]Ekl + (2 Eij + 3 Eij )[ A]Ekl (1 e


2 1
)Qij + E11 [ A]
1t
(1 e
1
) (1 e
2
)Qij + E2 2 [ A]
2t
(1 e
2
) (11)
t t
t + t
S ij
t
= S ij + S ij (12)
The tensile failure criterion is adopted in the model. Table 3. presents all the parameters of the viscoelastic
constitutive equation used in this model.
Table 3. Material properties of windshield
E0 /GPa /GPa E1 /GPa 1 /sec E2 /GPa 1 /sec

2.95 10.9 -96.4 0.832 7.33 5.24 40.5e-9 0.4

3) Material of the Supporting Structure and Rubber Gasket


The material of the Supporting Structure is aluminum alloy LD5. The elastic-plastic constitutive equation and
the tension failure criteria are used in the model. The rubber gasket is modeled as a pure elastic constitutive equation.
The material properties of LD5 and rubber are listed in the Table 4.
Table 4. Material properties of supporting structure and rubber gasket
Tangent E Density Yield Stress Failure Stress
Material E /MPa
/MPa /kg/m3 /MPa /MPa
LD5 71000 2000 0.3 2750 331 1.25
Rubber 300 / 0.3 1040 / /

Figure 8. Mesh of the windshield with structure. Figure 9. ZWT model.

IV. Numerical Result Analysis

A. Deformation of Bird and Windshield


The deformation of bird and windshield in simulation at t=0ms, 1.2ms, 2.4ms, and 3.6ms are shown in Fig. 10.
The high speed photographs at the same time are added for comparison. Figure 10(b) shows that the bird is
compressed a lot and the windshield deforms locally at the beginning of the bird impacting on the windshield. The
windshield is depressed obviously. The deformation of the windshield is moving backwards with the bird sliding on
it. Then the bird and windshield deform much bigger at the time 2 ms as shown in Fig. 10(c). The bird shape
changes completely. Finally, the bird crashes into pieces with increasing pressure and spreads in Fig. 10(d). The
comparisons in Fig. 10 show the deformation processes of the bird and windshield in simulation agree well with
those in the experiment. The elastic-plastic model with shear failure can reflect the deformation of the bird after
impacted very well.

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a) Time=0 ms b) Time=1ms c) Times=2 ms d) Time=3 ms
Figure 10. Comparison of bird and windshield deformation between simulation and experiment .

B. Damage Modes of the Windshield


The windshield is damaged when the bird speed is larger than 365 km/h. The typical failure model of windshield
under bird impact in experiment is shown in Fig. 11. The failure model of windshield in simulation is also presented.
Both of them show that the failure location is mainly the impact point and close to the back arc of the windshield.
The destroyed hole in experiment presents irregular shape. A main crack, which extends to the joint of the
windshield and the skin, is 30 degree with the center line. There are many small cracks around the hole. However
these small cracks are not long. The destroyed hole in the simulation is idealized symmetric, and different from the
experiment. There are many factors contributing to the inconsistency. One of the reasons is the real impact point in
experiment is not consistent with the specified impact point due to the imprecision of facility, the wind and so on. In
addition, a modified failure criterion of the windshield needs to be considered in the future to take into account the
30 degree crack.

Figure 11. Comparison of failure mode of windshield.

C. Displacement and Strain


Some experimental and simulation results are compared on displacement and strain, shown in Fig. 12 to Fig. 14. The
speed of bird is 340 km/h. Figure 12 and Figure13 are the displacement curves of sensor C1, C2, respectively, from
which it can be seen that the experimental curves become straight lines when the displacement is 20mm and 60mm.
The reason is that the measurement range of non-contact displacement transducer adopted in the test is 0~40mm.
And the displacement is preset 20mm in order to measure the values exceeding 40mm. Consequently, the
displacement, exceeding 60mm or less than 20mm, can not be measured.
However, the displacement peak value can be estimated from the trend of the experimental curve. The maximum
displacement of windshield after bird impact exceeds 60mm, which is more than 3 times of the thick of the
windshield. Consequently, the geometric nonlinear due to the large deformation of the windshield can not be
neglected. Figure 14 is the strain of sensor B1. In Fig. 12 to Fig. 14, the shape of the curves are similar and the
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extremum fit well. These show that the numerical simulation is quite good in the estimation of the dynamic
characteristics for windshield subjected to bird impact.

Figure 12. Comparison of sensor C1 Figure 13. Comparison of sensor C2


displacement. displacement.

V. Conclusion
Both experiment and numerical simulation of aircraft
windshield subjected to bird impact are studied. The
experiment shows that for the windshield and its support
structure the critical failure velocity of the bird is between
345 km/h and 365 km/h in the condition of the above
mentioned impact point. The comparison between the
simulation results and the experiment data for
instantaneous deformation of bird and windshield, damage
modes of the windshield, displacement curves and strain
curves of the measured points on the windshield show that
the numerical simulation has high accuracy. The bird
material model and the windshield material model built in Figure 14. Comparison of sensor B1 strain.
the paper can be applied in the dynamic response
simulation of windshield against bird-strike. A modified failure criterion of the windshield needs to be considered in
the future.

References
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American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
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