Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an effective way to evaluate structure strength margin of AAS (aircraft arresting system) barrier net and efficiency of its control scheme.

Design/methodology/approach – A numerical method to deal with barrier net strength design of AAS by means of nonlinear finite element (FE) has been used in this paper. The key of the simulation is that a special technique is proposed to cope with the arresting forces exerted on the tapes as boundary conditions, so the time history of stress/force distribution of AAS key components can be obtained. Also some techniques measures are taken to ensure good numerical convergence for this complex nonlinear system.

Findings – The simulation results cannot only provide the general important performance indexes of AAS, such as run-out distance and the maximum deceleration of the arrested aircraft, but also present stress or force contours of barrier net, tapes and aircraft, etc. therefore it is easy to evaluate the component's strength when a specific control scheme is adopted.

Practical implications – From component/structure strength perspective, this paper gives a practical engineering design method to evaluate performance of AAS.

Originality/value – The paper is probably the first to give a method which can evaluate AAS components strength considering their 3D geometry, and also its control scheme. The method has been validated through experimental results.