Experimental Study and Simplified Numerical Simulation of Bird Strike on Ti-6Al-4V Titanium Alloy Riveted Panels

Bird strikes pose a significant threat to aircraft safety. Riveted panels, which are widely used in aircraft structures, may be vulnerable to failure under impact loading. Accurately predicting the response of multi-rivet connections during bird strikes is important for structural design; however, detailed numerical modeling of numerous rivets requires explicit representation of small-scale rivet geometries within the overall structural model. Simplified connection elements provide an alternative representation, but their applicability to bird-strike scenarios involving complex coupled loading conditions has rarely been validated. This study investigated the impact response of Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy panels fastened with multiple metal rivets under bird-strike loading. Bird-strike experiments were conducted using a high-speed gas-gun system, and high-speed cameras captured structural deformation and failure. A corresponding simplified finite element model was subsequently established, in which shell elements represented the panels and simplified connection elements represented the rivets. The experimental and numerical results showed good agreement in the critical failure velocity (within 9.58% error), the impact process, the failure mode, and the backside response of the target panel. These findings demonstrate the feasibility of using simplified connection elements to represent rivets in numerical simulations of bird impacts on multi-riveted structures.