Some research by a MORPHO partner will be presented on the opening day of the EASN International Conference on Innovation in Aviation and Space for opening New Horizons, which takes place from 18 to 21 October in Barcelona. “Bird strike simulation on a bonded Ti/CFRP leading edge of an engine fan blade and numerical implementation of damage detection using FBGs” is the title of the article presented, on which the presentation will be made. Konstantinos Tserpes (University of Patras) will present the paper co-authored with Kosmas Papadopoulos and Ioannis Floros, both from the University of Patras. It will be between 14:10h and 14:30h. Other research along the same thematic lines will be presented in a session entitled “Aerostructures Part II“, moderated by Professor Konstantinos Tserpes between 13:30 and 15:30.
Bird strike represents a critical loading scenario for aeronautical structures, especially for engine fan blades. It is, therefore, of great importance to protect the leading edge of the fan blade from impact damage and to be able to detect impact damage in time. In the study to be presented, a parametric study on the effects of bird mass and impact energy was performed. The numerical results show that impact damage depends more on impact velocity than the bird mass. Aiming to assess the effectiveness of FBGs to detect debonding of the Ti layer due to bird strike, an FBG network has been modeled into the bondline and a study was performed on the correlation of the measured strains with impact damage. All this allows us to deal with an unavoidable problem in the best possible way, with the assistance of Smart Materials Structures.
The EASN Association and the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya – BarcelonaTech (UPC) are the organisers of the Conference, with the support of Clean Aviation, Sesar, CDTI and Fraunhofer. It will include a number of Plenary Talks by distinguished personalities of the European Aviation and Space sectors from the academia, industry, research community, and policy-makers. It will also include Thematic Sessions, along with Technical Workshops where innovative ideas, breakthrough concepts, and disruptive technologies will be presented and discussed with the aim to establish new research partnerships and possible synergies. Consult the list of topics to be discussed here. Moreover, it will provide a forum for presenting EU funded projects’ activities and achieved goals, as MORPHO, discussing current trends and future needs, and trying to identify possible collaborations with each other.