Bird Strike - Project - 2

Aircraft engines are meticulously engineered and manufactured. But once built, the engines are put through a relentless testing process. Here, we look at how aircraft engines are tested before production.

Water and ice fired into the test engines
Engines can take in large amounts of water, so water ingestion tests are standard. At Boeing, planes taxi through specially made water troughs. Manufacturers also force a stream of water into running engines. When General Electric tests its GEnx engines, it fires 800 gallons of water per minute into the engine. That water should pass through the engine and be shot out the back without reducing thrust. It means aircraft engines can handle the fiercest rainstorms and running through pools of water.

These tests assess the correct functioning of engines and thrust reversers, as well as braking systems when submitted to water thrown up by the wheels in cases of standing water on the runway. Stepping it up a notch, testers will also shoot ice into running engines. These are not dainty little icicles either. Rather, they are big balls of hard compacted ice. It mimics the effects of flying through a hailstorm.

Bird strike
We report a lot on bird strikes here at Simple Flying. A bird strike can occur when a feathered friend hits the cockpit window or other aircraft part. Birds can also get ingested into engines. Because engines are now so well engineered and built, bird strikes rarely cause fatalities (except to the bird). These days, there is one human fatality attributed to bird strikes per one billion flying hours. But bird strikes do damage aircraft, resulting in $1.2 billion worth of repairs annually. And, as the US Airways controlled landing in the Hudson River in 2009 demonstrated, bird strikes can still down a plane. Engine manufacturers have a low tech but effective way to test an engine's ability to withstand a bird strike. In the 1950s, de Havilland invented the chicken gun. It's a large-diameter, compressed-air cannon that fired chickens carcasses at the plane, including into its engines.

The desired outcome is for blades to hold their form after the collision. Since the 1950s, fresh chicken carcasses have been swapped out for frozen carcasses. Fowls have been used to test aircraft structures. This is not a common test. However, it can be an effective way to evaluate the results of a bird strike on an aircraft.

FILES ARE ATTACHED

2 different simulation: Cylinder as bird-"Birdstrike1" and another with Sphere generation-"Birdstrike"