Full aircraft ditching simulation by advanced fluid-structure interaction computational methods: a comparative analysis

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Full aircraft ditching simulation by advanced

fluid-structure interaction computational methods: a comparative analysis

Bertrand Langrand, Martin H. Siemann, Dieter Kohlgrueber

To cite this version:

Bertrand Langrand, Martin H. Siemann, Dieter Kohlgrueber. Full aircraft ditching simulation by

advanced fluid-structure interaction computational methods: a comparative analysis. ASIDIC 2019,

Jun 2019, MADRID, Spain. �hal-02344690�

Abstract ASIDIC 2019 13.09.2019

p. 1

Full aircraft ditching simulation by advanced fluid-structure interaction computational methods: a comparative analysis

B. Langrand

, M.H. Siemann

, and D. Kohlgrueber

1

DMAS, ONERA, F-59014 Lille Cedex, France

2

German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Structures and Design, Stuttgart, Germany

3

now at Assystem Germany GmbH, Bremen, Germany

*

Corresponding author: [email protected] Abstract

Most of air traffic operates over water, airports are mostly located around water, and near-airport operations (such takeoff, final approach, and landing) take place above water. Fortunately emergency landings on water, comprising ditching and crash on water, do not occur frequently.

However, as passenger safety under dynamic loads is of key importance in modern aerospace vehicle design, ditching analysis is an important part of the aircraft design. The landing of an airplane on water is an emergency situation that an aircraft faces only once. Loss of the aircraft is acceptable, provided the crew and passengers can safely escape and be rescued. For a water contact to qualify as a ditching, it is necessary that the touchdown follows a prudent approach and acceptable procedures. The design must provide structural integrity to protect all occupants, ensure that no excessive decelerations will be experienced by the occupants, and provide sufficient time for safe egress from a damaged aircraft (FAR 25.801 on Ditching).

In order to quantify the structural capacity of aircraft structures under hydrodynamic loading, the prediction of global and local structural loads and resulting deformations is of fundamental importance. The ditching analysis, however, is very challenging as ditching is a time-dependent, highly nonlinear, multi-physics problem with different length and time scales resulting in complex loading conditions and coupled fluid-structure interaction. The analysis of ditching has been widely based on experimental testing of sub-scale models in order to assess the aircraft motion under various impact conditions with the objective to demonstrate that the aircraft can make a safe landing. Nevertheless, effects related to the structural integrity are rarely regarded in recent experimental campaigns because of the financial and temporal effort associated. Such experiments require costly sub-scale models, limiting the number of designs to be investigated, and they only allow for a certain number of probes, which results in comparatively little insight into involved physical phenomena.

In recent years, simulations are increasingly employed to analyze the structural behavior under ditching conditions. The analysis of ditching can be based on advanced numerical simulations of the transient Fluid-Structure (FS) interaction. Fluid and structure models are coupled with the structural model based on the Finite Element method and the fluid domain based on either the Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) or the hybrid Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics-Finite Element (SPH-FE) approaches. Both computational methods were comprehensively compared using data of guided ditching experiments [1,2]. Different test cases were considered for the comparisons, varying the panel thickness and curvature. The numerical results were satisfactory in terms of local pressures, local strains, and global force to consider further applications to full-scale structures.

In this communication, these advanced computational methods were applied to spacecraft and

aircraft ditching problems in full scale (Figure 1). The water impact of the Apollo Command Module

was considered first because experimental data were available in the open literature for different

impact conditions (i.e. purely vertical drop tests and oblique (with a significant horizontal velocity

component) ditching tests, variation of initial pitch angle, and variation of initial velocities). The

Abstract ASIDIC 2019 13.09.2019

p. 2

numerical results obtained for different impact conditions were very close to the experiment data in terms of accelerations and mean pressure for both computational methods.

Furthermore, the ditching of a generic transport aircraft was simulated using both numerical approaches. The generic aircraft model had a quasi-rigid mechanical behavior. The mass, the position of the center of gravity, and the moments of inertia were computed using physical databases. The obtained geometrical and mechanical characteristics of the aircraft model were typical of a short- to medium-range commercial passenger twin-engine jet. Different parameters of the ditching scenario (mass, initial pitch angle, initial horizontal and vertical velocities) were varied to analyze their influence on the impact severity. Additionally, yaw and roll angles were considered in the computations. The influence of the aerodynamic forces (i.e. lift in particular) was studied for some ditching configurations. The aircraft kinematics, velocities, and accelerations obtained with both computational methods were compared.

In addition an approach to consider a deformable fuselage with a realistic mass and stiffness distribution within the ditching simulations will be presented.

Figure 1. Full spacecraft/aircraft ditching simulations. Left: ditching of the Appolo Command Module using an ALE approach. Right: Finite Element model of the generic transport aircraft (contour plot: pressure distribution on the generic transport aircraft).

[1] M.H. Siemann, and B. Langrand, Coupled fluid-structure computational methods for aircraft ditching simulations: Comparison of ALE-FE and SPH-FE approaches, Computers & Structures, 188 (2017):95-108 [2] B. Langrand, and M.H. Siemann, Aircraft ditching simulation: a comparative analysis of advanced coupled fluid-structure computational methods, Aerospace Structural Impact Dynamics International Conference (ASIDIC), October 17-19, 2017, Wichita, Kansas, USA

Author bio

Bertrand Langrand. A graduate from the University of Valenciennes, he received his PhD degree in Solid

Mechanics and Mechanical Engineering in 1998 and his Habilitation degree in 2011. A research scientist at

ONERA in Computational Structural and Solid Mechanics since 1999, his research activities are mainly related

to crashworthiness, impact and blast-loaded structure problems. His research has also been focused on

material behavior characterization, parameter identification, assembly modeling and Fluid/Structure

interaction.