SIMULATION OF THE IMPACT ON WATER OF A SUB-FLOOR COMPONENT AND A FULL-SCALE WG30 HELICOPTER

This paper describes DLR’s work concerning the simulations of a sub-floor component and of a full-scale WG 30 helicopter impacting on water with the explicit Finite-Element code PAM-CRASH. For the modelling of the water medium, a classical Lagrangian mesh and an elastic-plastic hydrodynamic model are used. The metallic components of the structures are modelled with an elastic-plastic material model, in which material failure is considered. The behavior of the composite parts are described by a multi-layered shell material including orthotropic input data. Regarding the structure/water interactions, they are modelled with a classical node to segment contact. For both structures, the results of the PAM-CRASH analyses are compared qualitatively and quantitatively to the measured data gained during the tests conducted at CIRA in order to validate the code used. The most representative comparisons are discussed in detail and show that the test data and simulation results correlate well.