Modeling and Simulation of Pulverizing Aircraft Crashes

Abstract

Do you know how an airplane crash causes the breakup of the aircraft? Professor Goong Chen of Texas A&M University, uses applied mathematics and computational physics to build a model of airplane, the Airbus A320, and let it be run on a supercomputer to simulate the collision into different terrains of land or mountain to see what damage a crash may cause. There are many videos showing the processes and outcomes of crashes. The talk aim aims at explaining a forensic investigation and making assessments of a recent crash. The study is based on mathematical modeling, supercomputing and visualization using the numerical modeling tool LS-DYNA.

The method was developed by hybridizing two primary methods: the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH), and the methodology was validated against an experimental crash test of an F4 Phantom II fighter jet into a wall. The data from the recovered Flight Data Recorder are used and the effects of terrain on pulverization are visualized through the animation videos as the basis for making the assessments. The major assessment is that Flight 9525 crashed "head-in" into a ravine where the rock formation has high degree of hardness. Finally, the study has a potential of being made into real-time flight crash simulators to help the study of crash worthiness and survivability for future aviation safety. The talk is intended for a general audience and does not require strong technical background in order to understand.

All majors and faculty of AUS are welcome.

For more information please contact [email protected].

About the Speaker 

Professor Goong Chen has research interests incontrol theory, boundary element methods and numerical solutions of PDEs,engineering mechanics, quantum computation, chemical physics and quantummechanics. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Elsevier/Academic Press Mathematics inScience and Engineering book series, and the Journal of Mathematical Analysisand Applications, and has served on several other editorial boards, includingthe SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, the International Journal onQuantum Information, and the Electronic Journal of Differential Equations. He is also a co-holder of a US Patent on certain quantum circuitdesign for quantum computing. He has published six books and more than 140papers, and co-edited four books. One of Professor's Chen papers, on the Malaysian Airlines plane thatdisappeared without trace, became The American Maths Society's most downloadedpaper of the year.