Bird impacts in the aeronautical field can cause serious damage to aircraft, especially during take-off and airport approach phases. Over the last 20 years, Civil Aviation has had to bear costs of several hundred million dollars for the consequences of bird impacts on aircraft. The strength of airframes has therefore become a major priority for aircraft and airframe manufacturers.

Since 20 % of bird impacts affected fuselage nose sections, we decided with our partners on the SAMBA Project to work on aircraft cockpit birdshields, observes Guillaume Vuillermoz Head of RT Aerolia sas Group.

Ambitious objectives

Our consortium aims to propose an industrial shield structure concept based on a new differentiating technology offering much better overall performance, continues Pierre Magnin, Head of RT Engineering Aerolia. To achieve this objective we must create new shield models and develop innovating test methods.

This new shield concept will result in a higher level of performance in order to lighten the structure by 10 to 20 % for the shield and its sub-assemblies and increase the overall cockpit safety level.

A partnership of skills

To successfully complete this project, AEROLIA remains faithful to its strategy associating the fabric of SMEs with its developments in Research Technologies; we launched this innovating RT partnership with the SMEs in 2011 with, for example, Aeroteam Services for the electron beam welding technologies, points out Christian Cornille, CEO of Aerolia sas. For SAMBA, Aerolia partnered with the SMEs ESTEVE (laser fusion of aluminium powder), ATECA (manufacture of core materials), NIMITECH (innovating technologies for composite components) and CEDREM (modelling of the impact behaviour of honeycomb and 3D energy-absorbing materials).

EADS Innovation Works will be involved as expert on the materials used in the shock resistance structures. Lastly, STRATIVER (HUTCHINSON group) will be involved on the shield production process.

 Two laboratories are also involved on the SAMBA Project: the Institut Clément Ader in Toulouse and the “Institut de Mécanique et d’Ingénierie in Bordeaux” (I2M), on the numerical analyses and tests.

Two lines of action will be studied regarding composite and metallic materials as well as a hybrid research approach combining the two skills of Aerolia, which designed and manufactured composite and metallic sections of the Airbus A350 XWB.

Labelled by the Aerospace Valley cluster and supported by the Aerospace Valley, Astech and Pegase aerospace clusters, the SAMBA Project recently received official backing from the French Government, as well as from Airbus and Europcopter which have already expressed their interest and support.