Bird strike can cause serious risks to the safety of air travel. In this paper, the aim is to improve design by determining deformation and damage mechanisms of laminated glass windows when subjected to high velocity soft impacts. To achieve this, laboratory-scale impact experiments using bird substitute materials were performed in the velocity range of 100–180 m s−1. An important step forward is that high-speed 3D Digital Image Correlation (DIC) has effectively been employed to extract the full-field deformation and strain on the back surface of the specimens during impact. The finite element simulations were performed in Abaqus/explicit using Eulerian approach and were able to represent successfully the experiments.

For the laminated glass structures investigated, the damage inflicted is strongly sensitive to the nose shape of the projectile and most deleterious is a flat-fronted projectile. Two threshold velocities for impact damage have been identified associated with firstly the front-facing and secondly the rear-facing glass layer breaking. The order of the glass layers significantly influences the impact performance. The findings from this research study have led to a deeper and better-quantified understanding of soft impact damage on laminated glass windows and can lead to more effective design of aircraft windshields.