Abstract: In order to study the bird strike resistance performance of the nacelle inlet structure of a civil airliner, this paper carried out a bird strike test study on the nacelle inlet of the composite laminate structure. The experimental research results show that the nacelle inlet structure has tearing at the riveting point between the lip and the lap strip, the fasteners at the connection between the lip and the front wall are pulled off, depression and deformation occurred at the connection of front wall and the inner and outer wall plate, and the outer wall plate of the inlet appeared cracks and other damages. In addition, PAM-CRASH software is used to perform bird impact finite element simulation verification on the nacelle inlet structure. The numerical simulation results show: Bird impact mode, impact process, lip structure damage morphology, and the strain on the front wall and inner and outer wall panels is basically consistent with the test results, indicating that the established bird strike numerical simulation model can better simulate the deformation and failure behavior of the nacelle inlet lip. The bird strike test and numerical simulation analysis show that the front wall of the nacelle inlet was not penetrated despite the lip′s serious damage, which verified the bird strike resistance of the structure. The results of this study can provide references for the structural design of the nacelle inlet.

Key words: bird strike test, nacelle inlet, impact dynamics, impact simulation