Engineers predict impact damage to commercial aircraft

Hail, ice, and ground service equipment vehicles can cause severe – but hard to detect – damage to components of commercial aircraft made of composite materials Airlines, aircraft manufactures and academic researchers are working to develop new ways to detect this type of damage.

For the past two-and-half years UC San Diego structural engineering graduate students Gabriela DeFrancisci and Zhi Chen, and professor Hyonny Kim, have been testing composite aircraft materials in UC San Diego's Powell Labs, using different equipment such as a tension / compression machine for the smaller specimens and a shake table for the larger specimens.

The goal of DeFrancisci's research is to determine what blunt impact scenarios are commonly occurring in commercial composite aircraft and to understand what type of damage it creates.  Composites are said to be one of the most important materials to be adapted for aviation since the use of aluminum in the 1920s.

One of the benefits of using composite materials is that it allows the aircraft to be lighter, and therefore reduces fuel consumption. Composite materials are also strong, stiff, and more corrosion resistant than metallic aircraft.

''With new all-composite fuselage transport aircraft coming into service, significantly more composite skin surface area is exposed to contact with ground service equipment,'' DeFrancisci said. ''With a metallic aircraft, this type of impact event would create a visible dent.

Composites tend to rebound back to their original shape, which would make this type of accident difficult to detect. We are interested in creating damage that is extensive on the interior but can't be visually detected from the impact side.