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.