Numerical investigation of structural crash response of thin-walled structures on soft soil

Accident statistics show that although the certification of aircraft structures is based on crash scenarios on hard or rigid surfaces, in reality most of the crash cases occur on soft soil or water. Therefore a structure which is designed for hard surfaces may not be safe enough for a possible crash scenario on water or soft soil. Finite element method (FEM) has been used in several numerical investigations and promising results were obtained. However, since soil is a granular medium this work aims at numerical modeling of the experimentally observed soil behavior using particle-based numerical technique. In this work numerical simulations of the crash tests on idealized cones and hemispheres were used to validate the models and compare FEM-based models with particle-based models. The results of numerical simulations were compared with quasi-static and dynamic test results conducted on coarse sand sample at the Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V (DLR). After obtaining a stable and accurate particle-based numerical model for the soft soil the crash performance of deformable metallic energy absorbers on soft soil ground was investigated and compared with test data and numerical investigations of rigid ground impacts.