The mission of the Aerospace Working Group (AWG) is to develop and publish on the AWG Website aerospace test cases and modeling guidelines for ANSYS-Livermore Software Technology's (ANSYS-LST) non-linear analysis program LS-DYNA^®. The mission is achieved through the partnering of industry, government agencies, academia, and LSTC. The goal is to improve consistency and reliability of aerospace impact simulations with LS-DYNA^®, thereby gaining regulatory agency acceptance of these simulations.

Background:

Since becoming commercially available, LS-DYNA^® has continued to evolve and has become widely accepted in the aviation industry for performing non-linear transient analyses of high energy impact events such as fan-blade release, engine foreign object ingestion, aircraft shielding, and bird strike. To improve regulatory agency acceptance of these analyses in lieu of tests, the Aerospace Working Group (AWG) has been developing modeling guidelines and test case models for these events. A significant amount of the data to support this work comes from ongoing research performed under the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Aircraft Catastrophic Failure Prevention Program and the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) Aviation Safety Program.

The FAA's Aircraft Catastrophic Failure Prevention Program was initiated to support work of the Aviation Rulemaking Advisory Committee (ARAC) following the Sioux City uncontained engine failure accident. Based on industry recommendations to ARAC, this research teamed government agencies with industry and academia to develop LS-DYNA^® based models that simulate impact of blades against the engine containment structure and also analysis of blade fragments impacting the fuselage.

NASA has also performed work in this area collaborating with the FAA in NASA’s Jet Engine Containment Concepts and Blade-Out Simulation project. NASA continues to be a valuable partner in both testing and analysis.

Formation of the AWG began in 2003 and was a logical outgrowth of this research as industry strived to resolve issues important to regulatory agency acceptance of analysis results. The current group goes beyond the original ARAC research charter to focus on development of modeling guidelines and test cases necessary for acceptance of these analysis methods by the regulatory agencies.

Today the AWG is made up of subgroups focused on specific regulations. The original group has transitioned into the Engine Related Impact and Failure (ERIF) subgroup.

A new subgroup, initiated in 2014, is seeking to aid certification by analysis for Cabin Interiors (CI). This subgroup is supported by FAA Aviation Research under the Crashworthiness program. Initial work in this group is the development of test cases to exercise elements, materials, contacts, and other features that are important to the successful simulation of seating systems. The subgroup is also supplementing the overall Modeling Guidelines Document to include material that is specific to seating system simulations.

Products:

The AWG products are published and maintained on the AWG Website and include:

• AWG Test Case Suite (by subgroup)
• AWG LS-DYNA^® Modeling Guidelines Document
• AWG LS-DYNA^® Material Parameter Sets