Bird strike threat on jet airliners: Current protection and prevention techniques, focus on certification requirements
Beatriz Angulo-Ibanez
Commercial Propulsion Safety Enhancement
Airbus Operations SAS
316 route de Bayonne
Toulouse, Haute, Caronne, France 31060
(067) 723-8985
BEATRIZ.ANGULO-IBANEZ@AIRBUS.COM
and
Antoine Pilon
Commercial Propulsion Safety Enhancement and Airworthiness
Airbus Operations SAS
316 route de Bayonne
Toulouse, Haute, Caronne, France 31060
ANTOINE.PILON@AIRBUS.COM
Abstract: Bird strikes are a safety threat for aircraft’s airframe and engines, and the risk is increasing in the post-covid air traffic era. This increasing threat will be illustrated with analyses performed on Airbus fleet, as an update of last year’s presentation “A320NEO vs A320CEO: EFFECT OF LATEST AND QUIETER ENGINES ON BIRD STRIKE RATES”. Operational influencing factors, such as time since last movement, will be quantified.
In front of this threat, aviation relies on prevention and protection means, for which this presentation will provide insights from the aircraft designers’ perspective.
Protection is obtained on the airframe and engines through compliance to Certification Requirements. This implies, depending on the aircraft area, either to demonstrate no penetration in case of bird strike or to prove capacity of Continued Safe Flight & Landing through redundant load path / system provision, if there is penetration and damage.
The engines’ Certification Requirements are focused on keeping a minimum level of thrust or ensuring a safe shutdown, depending on the size of the bird. The requirements take into account the possibility of encountering a flock, which may potentially impact all engines. Testing is required for large, medium and small flocking birds affecting fan blades integrity or being ingested into the engine core.
Regarding prevention means, in partnership with our Engine Manufacturers, Airbus has analyzed during the last years potential Operational Recommendations for pilots and operators to limit the bird strike exposure, by reducing the time at low altitude using higher power at take-off. An overview of the results of the 3 different conducted studies will be provided by this presentation. Our colleague Duncan McDougall, from Rolls Royce, will provide more details about this joint analysis at the Bird Strike Conference this year (proposal titled “Influence of Take-Off power on bird ingestion threat”). In closing, an overview of Airbus’ perspective on other prevention techniques (such as aircraft mounted devices currently in service and in development, as well as wildlife management means at airport level) will be provided.
Beatriz Angulo-Ibanez
Beatriz Angulo-Ibanez has worked for Airbus Commercial Engineering for the past 19 years. During her career in Spain, Germany and France, she has supported the Certification Flight Test Campaign of the A380 program, as a structures engineer for empennage and landing gear doors. She has also supported the first customer deliveries of the A380 and A350. In her current role for Propulsion Safety Enhancement, she is in charge of bringing forward projects to enhance the safety level of the fleet beyond the certification standards. Protection and prevention against bird strikes is one of her lines of work. She contributed to a presentation by her colleague Antoine Pilon to the “2022 North American Bird Strike conference”, titled “A320NEO vs A320CEO: EFFECT OF LATEST AND QUIETER ENGINES ON BIRD STRIKE RATES”. Beatriz Angulo-Ibanez is also a published author of novels and travel chronicles.
Antoine Pilon
Antoine Pilon is a Powerplant Safety and Certification engineer at Airbus Commercial airplanes. He’s the Airbus rotorburst and propeller blade release expert but his duties cover all major engine failure issues such as FBO or Bird Strike. Antoine has responsibility to design and certify safe aircraft against rotorburst and is involved in all stages of the design process, from R&D to certification and accident / incident investigations. He took part in a major investigation related to a bird strike that occured in 2019. Antoine is a member of several industry / Airworthiness authorities committees related to aviation safety (Bird Strike / FBO / Rotorburst) and was an Airbus representative in the EASA Open Rotor Bird Strike rulemaking.