Hail Impact Simulation on CFC Covers of a Transport Aircraft

Due to increasing weight saving requirements in new aircraft, structures traditionally built from aluminium alloys are increasingly replaced by carbon fibre reinforced Composites (CFC). For the preliminary flight clearance hail imact si- mulations were perfomed on CFC covers. For the composite material the authors applied a user- defined material. Behaviour of ice / hail stone was modeled through fitting of parameters for the Johnson–Cook material model to appropriate test data. While the precision of simulations was sufficient for a preliminary assessment, further tests will be necessary for permanent approval as well as for refinement of numerical models.