High-Fidelity Aircraft Simulations for the Application in an Industrialized Ditching Analysis Process

The investigation of an aircraft in the situation of an emergency landing on water, known as ditching, has to considered in the certification process. The investigation of ditching is generally conducted by means of grandfathering assumptions or by tests with sub-scale models, nevertheless limited in terms of costs, repeatability, and scalability. Computer-aided simulations show potential to overcome such limitations and to support experiments. This article demonstrates the feasibility of representative FE-models generated in the scope of a preliminary process chain to determine local structural behavior in the aircraft in time affordable high-fidelity SPH-FE ditching simulations.