Foam-Core Effect on the Integrity of Tailplane Leading Edge During Bird-Strike Event

The objective of this paper is to describe the procedure of optimizing the leading-edge structure of a tailplane in an industrial environment. The paper also investigates the effect of implementing a foam core between aluminum sheets in a tailplane leading-edge structure. Bird strike against two types of leading-edge structures, one with and the other without a foam core, was investigated and then the optimum design for each case was determined. The results indicate that if a foam core is embedded between the aluminum sheets instead of increasing the thicknesses of aluminum sheets, the skin overall weight can be reduced by 32%.