An Efficient Contact Model for the Simulation of Cargo Airdrop Extraction Phase

Abstract

A high-fidelity cargo airdrop simulation requires the accurate modeling of the contact dynamics between an aircraft and its cargo. This paper presents a general and efficient contact-friction model for the simulation of aircraft-cargo coupling dynamics during an airdrop extraction phase. The proposed approach has the same essence as the finite element node-to-segment contact formulation, which leads to a flexible, straightforward, and efficient code implementation. The formulation is developed under an arbitrary moving frame with both aircraft and cargo treated as general six degrees-of-freedom rigid bodies, thus eliminating the restrictions of lateral symmetric assumptions in most existing methods. Moreover, the aircraft-cargo coupling algorithm is discussed in detail, and some practical implementation details are presented. The accuracy and capability of the present method are demonstrated through four numerical examples with increasing complexity and fidelity.