Design and Experimental Study of Raindrop High-Speed Emission System

When aircrafts fly through thunderstorm areas, it is inevitable to suffer the impact of raindrops. The structures may be damaged by the multiple impacts. Therefore, rain erosion test is very important to evaluate the safety and service life of aerospace structures and involved materials. In the work, a multistage system is designed for high-speed raindrop emission based on the split Hopkinson bar technique, and is achieved experimentally. The high-speed camera is used to record the experimental process, and the size and velocity of raindrop are obtained. The results show that the velocity of the raindrop jet increased with the enhancement of loading speed, and the increase is greater than the loading speed. When the velocity of the striker bar is up to 28.22 m/s, the jet velocity can reach 50.90 m/s via acceleration of the emission system. Meanwhile, the raindrop mass is 365.03 mg, and the interval times can be up to more than 5 times. This work could fill the gap of the current high-speed raindrop impact loading technique, and provide the experimental techniques for the anti-raindrop properties of materials and structures from aeronautics and astronautics.