Analysing Bird Strikes in Fast-Time

Abstract

To analyse bird strike occurrences as well as the effect of operational risk-reducing measures, a fast-time simulation environment was developed. It allows to simulate bird movement and air traffic simultaneously and to detect collisions as well as near misses between birds and aircraft. The set-up was validated with Monte-Carlo simulations involving bird movement from all seasons as well as different flight plans. It was shown, that approximately thrice as many bird strikes occurred in simulation in comparison to the number of collisions reported for the reference airport. Contributing factors to this overestimate are missing bird behaviour in the simulation and limited bird strike reporting in reality. Seasonal correspondence as well as reproducibility of the results was confirmed. To analyse the simulation’s ability for estimating potential damage, the over 4000 simulated strikes were classified within the aviation authorities’ certification requirements regarding impact-resistance. For this purpose, the kinetic energy of the recorded collisions as well as the certification requirements was calculated. The analysis revealed that 3.89% of all bird strikes caused damage in the simulation. In comparison, US bird strike statistics showed 2.28% damage over a 25-year period. Considering that the simulation’s underlying bird model relies on data from Europe, where no reference regarding damaging strikes was available, these results seem reasonable. To further validate and to enhance the model, bird data from the US or long-term bird-strike statistics from Europe would be required.