Crash Analysis of Aircraft Nose Prototype

Abstract

This paper presents the comparison of structural deformation of generic metals and the new age composite materials on the aircraft nose during a crash. The analysis is conducted to be able to make more educated predictions of the internal structure damage caused when the airplane has a head on collision with a vertical obstacle (buildings) or when affected by a bird strike. Two nose profiles widely seen nowadays are spherically blunted tangent ogive and elliptical. These nose cones have been designed based on model to prototype ratio on NX CAD. CFD has been performed on the nose designs and solved on ANSYS Fluent for flow visualizations. Materials like Aluminum alloy (which is still widely used in fuselage frames) and Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer with epoxy resins, have been applied to the CAD models. These were analyzed for stress, strain and deformation on ANSYS 18.1 by simulating the crash of the nose on a thick structural steel plate. After the analysis, it was inferred that the elliptical nose made of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer has less structural deformation on being crashed.