During the last decades, in the aerospace industry, the use of composite materials takes more and more important place in the design of the structural components.
These materials replacing the conventional metallic materials leading to lighter structures, contribute to the reduction of the CO2 emissions and to the production costs.
Consequently, the aeronautical structures have been subjected to increase constraints in terms of quality, cost and time, in addition to the technical requirements themselves.
Faced with this fierce competition, it is vital for the European aeronautical companies to stand out on the one hand in terms of costs (study and manufacturing) by
advanced technologies and secondly in terms of quality and innovation of solutions proposed to the major customers.
However, in the design of the aircraft structures, the constructors are concerned by the vulnerability of their structures.
Vital components for the safety of the aircraft such as the cockpit, engines, wings, empennages are threatened by the impact of foreign bodies including bird, hailstone, metal and tyre debris.
These structural elements therefore require, in accordance with the certification regulations, the demonstration that they are able in particular of absorbing a significant part of the impact energy in order to protect the vital elements.
Thanks to the confidence gained in the numerical simulation methodologies through correlation with a wide range of tests, non-linear “realistic simulations” (Virtual Testing) are taking more and more place in the design and sizing of aeronautical components. During development phases, “realistic simulations” make easier quality search (safer and lighter structures) and allow also the reducing of the costly and time-consuming development tests. During the Certification phase, Airworthiness Authorities agree more and more to use the “Virtual Testing” or “realistic simulations” as means of compliance for all the items for which an acceptable level of validation of methodologies has been demonstrated. This approach has been followed by aircraft manufacturers especially for bird impact on aircraft components.
The main objective of the TIOC-Wing project is the development and the validation of criteria and a virtual testing methodology that will allow to predict the resistance of a representative stiffened composite wing panel subjected to the impact of tyre debris and the residual strength capability of the damaged structure. In order to assess the technical success of the project, the Virtual Testing methodology will be used to quantify the cost efficiency by replacing a tyre impact physical test on a fully (including panel curvature) wing component (at aircraft level) by the corresponding Virtual Testing validated on a representative wing panel sub-component. Expected impact from the TIOC-Wing project will be quantified for the cost efficiency showing the benefit brought by the use of Virtual Testing methodology validated on aircraft sub-component.
