Coupled Shell-Material Point Method for Bird Strike Simulation

In a bird strike, the bird undergoes large deformation like flows; while most part of the structure is in small deformation, the region near the impact point may experience large deformations, even fail. This paper develops a coupled shell-material point method (CSMPM) for bird strike simulation, in which the bird is modeled by the material point method (MPM) and the aircraft structure is modeled by the Belytschko-Lin-Tsay shell element. The interaction between the bird and the structure is handled by a particle-to-surface contact algorithm. The distorted and failed shell elements will be eroded if a certain criterion is reached. The proposed CSMPM takes full advantages of both the finite element method and the MPM for bird strike simulation and is validated by several numerical examples.