A novel aircraft energy absorption strut system with corrugated composite plate to improve crashworthiness

A novel crashworthy aircraft strut system with corrugated composite plate and hinge joints is proposed and investigated. The hinge joints could transfer axial impact load to the corrugated composite plate (CCP). The best crashworthy CCP is guaranteed to enhance the energy absorption ability. To verify the impact dynamic performance, the progressive failure model is adopted. Both of the fibre and matrix failure modes are considered in the failure criterion. To give a better failure behaviour, the single shell and stacked shell approaches are researched and compared. Based on the validated model, the sensitivities of layer number, layer angle and cross-sectional size are given. Numerical results show that the proposed crashworthy fuselage structure could enhance the energy absorption ability. The intra-laminar and delinamination could be simulated by the stacked shell model. A similar energy absorption ability is demonstrated for the different CCPs with progressive failure behaviour. An unstable failure behaviour may be exhibited if the lateral stiffness and strength is not enough to support the impact process.