Numerical Simulation of Elastic-Plastic Deformation of Aircraft Fuel Tank Access Cover Impacted by Tyre Fragment

All new-designed passenger aircrafts have to meet strict national and international safety requirements in accidents. One of the possible accidents is pneumatic tire damage, which can become the reason of the tire tread fragmenting. Some fragments of the tire tread with different mass and velocity can impact and break different plane elements. According to the safety requirements the designing company has to prove that the new plane withstands the tire fragment impact. The development tests to meet this requirement are obviously difficult and costly experiments, so it is very cost-effective to use a numerical simulation in the design of a plane to solve the problem. In this case the simulations results should be verified by the model experiments. The results of LS-DYNA£ numerical simulation of an aircraft fuel tank access cover elastic-plastic deformation are presented in the paper. The results are compared to experimental data, obtained for the covers subjected to tire fragment impacts at different angles with the speed of 110 m/s. Comparison of the cover residual deflection and strain time-histories shows that the simulation results are in a good agreement with the experimental data.