HCL: Aerospace and Defense Case Study

Less than two years after his pioneering flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903, Orville Wright recorded the first collision of a flying machine with a bird. In the hundred-plus years since then, as aircraft and air travel have increased, so have midair meetings between birds and planes. When avian life and airplanes share airspace, accidents are inevitable.

In recent years, bird strikes—as they’re now called—have become an increasingly regular and costly occurrence. While the birds never fare well, 85 percent of the time the plane escapes unscathed. In the other instances, there can be damage to the aircraft, sometimes extensive, and even human casualties. Annually, there are approximately 10,000 strikes with civilian planes recorded in the U.S. alone, with losses of more than \\\$650 million for commercial and military aircraft. Since 1988, over 220 fatalities have been reported worldwide.

To address this growing problem, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and national and international bird-strike committees document the effects of incidents and work closely with airports, airlines, and pilots on strike prevention. Aviation engineers are focused on the problem, too, concentrating on how to strengthen aerostructure designs so that damage is minimized and flying safety is ensured, even when the inevitable happens.

Challenge

HCL Technologies needed to design a lightweight vertical stabilizer for an aircraft tail assembly and ensure that it would be strong enough to withstand impact from bird strike and meet flight certification regulations.

Solution

Using Abaqus, R&D engineers simulated structural behavior during impact for a series of composite and hybrid-material stabilizer designs of varying thicknesses and composition to determine which options would satisfy safety standards.

Benefits

Realistic simulation focused design development and, as a result, helped the engineering team dramatically reduce costly and time-intensive physical testing for their aerostructure design project.

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