Impact on Laminated Composite Materials

Laminated composite materials are used extensively in aerospace and other applications. With their high specific modulus, high specific strength, and the capability of being tailored for a specific application, these materials offer definite advantages compared to more traditional materials. However, their behavior under impact is a concern, since impacts do occur during manufacture, normal operations, or maintenance. The situation is critical for impacts which induce significant internal damage, undetectable by visual inspection, that cause large drops in the strength and stability of the structure. Impact dynamics, including the motion of both the impactor and the target and the force developed at the interface, can be predicted accurately using a number of models. The state of stress in the vicinity of the impact is very complex and requires detailed analyses. Accurate criteria for predicting initial failure are generally not available, and analyses after initial failure are questionable. For these reasons, it can be said that a general method for estimating the type and size of impact damage is not available at this time. However, a large amount of experimental data has been published, and several important features of impact damage have been identified. In particular, interply delaminations are known to occur at the interface between plies with different fiber orientation. Their shape is generally elongated in the direction of the fibers in the lower ply at that interface. The delaminated area is known to increase linearly with the kinetic energy of the impactor after a certain threshold value has been reached. The effect of impact damage on the properties of the laminate has obvious implications for design and inspection of actual structures. Experimental results concerning the residual strength of impact damaged specimens subjected to tension, compression, shear, bending, and both static and fatigue loading are available. Analyses concentrate primarily on predicting residual tensile and compressive strength. In order to fully understand the effect of foreign object impact damage, one should understand impact dynamics and be able to predict the location, type, and size of the damage induced and the residual properties of the laminate. This article is organized along these lines and presents a comprehensive review of the literature on impact of laminated composites, considering both experimental and analytical approaches.

A Progressive Damage Model for Laminated Composites Containing Stress Concentrations

A progressive damage model is presented for notched laminated composites subjected to tensile loading. The model is capable of assessing damage in laminates with arbitrary ply-orientations and of predicting the ultimate tensile strength of the notched laminates. The model consists of two parts, namely, the stress analysis and the failure analysis. Stresses and strains in laminates were analyzed on the basis of classical lamination theory with the consideration of material nonlinearity. Damage accumulation in laminates was evaluated by proposed failure criteria combined with a proposed property degradation model. A nonlinear finite element program, based on the model, was developed for lami nates containing a circular hole. Numerical results were compared with the experimental data on laminates containing an open circular hole. An excellent agreement was found be tween the analytical prediction and the experimental data .

Prediction of Transverse Cracking and Stiffness Reduction in Cross-Ply Laminated Composites

A modified shear lag analysis, taking into account the concept of in terlaminar shear layer, is employed to predict the onset of a transverse crack and multiple transverse cracking. In this analysis, the boundary conditions are satisfied for any trans verse crack spacing. The crack multiplication is simulated by adjusting the crack spacing. Based on this analysis the laminate stiffness reduction due to the multiple transverse crack ing is also evaluated in cross-ply laminated composites. The energy concept is utilized to assess the effect of 90 layer thickness and the constraining effect of 0 layer on the trans verse cracking behavior of cross-ply laminated composites. Predictions of the onset of a transverse crack and stiffness reduction due to transverse cracks are compared with those of previous analyses and existing experimental data. The present analysis is simple, yet its results show reasonable agreement with experimental results.

Damage Tolerance of Laminated Composites Containing an Open Hole and Subjected to Tensile Loadings
An investigation was conducted to study tensile failure of laminated composites containing an open hole. This investigation was especially concerned with determining the response, type and extent of damage in composites as a function of applied load. Both an analysis and experiments were performed for graphite/epoxy composites during the study. A progressive damage analysis was developed to study the problem. The analysis was verified by an extensive comparison between the numerical calculations based on the analysis and the experimental data obtained during the investigation as well as from published literature. Different graphite/epoxy composite materials were considered in the study. Overall, good agreements were found between the calculations and the data. Based on the study, it was found that the types and extent of internal damage in the notched composites strongly depend on the ply orientation of the laminates. The types and the size of damage directly affect the strength and failure mode of the composites

Analysis of laminated composite plates using a higher-order shear deformation theory.

A higher-order shear deformation theory is used to analyse laminated anisotropic composite plates for deflections, stresses, natural frequencies and buckling loads. The theory accounts for parabolic distribution of the transverse shear stresses, and requires no shear correction coefficients. A displacement finite element model of the theory is developed, and applications of the element to bending, Vibration and stability of laminated plates are discussed. The present solutions are compared with those obtained using the classical plate theory and the three-dimensional elasticity theory.

Fracture toughness of the tensile and compressive fibre failure modes in laminated composites
The fracture toughnesses associated with fibre tensile failure and compressive fibre kinking in a T300/913 carbon-epoxy laminated composite are measured using compact tension and compact compression tests respectively. The specimen strain fields were monitored using a digital speckle photogrammetry system during the tests. The damage present in the specimens after the tests was investigated using Cscan and optical and scanning electron microscopy. The initiation and propagation values of the tensile fibre failure critical energy release rate were determined as 91.6 kJ/m2 and 133 kJ/m2 respectively. For fibre compressive kinking, an initiation value of 79.9 kJ/m2 was obtained, but no meaningful propagation values could be determined. In both cases, the test results showed low scatter

The response of laminated composite plates under lowvelocity impact loading

This paper is concerned with evaluation of the in-plane dimensional effect of fiber-reinforced laminated composites under low-velocity impact. (0/90/0/90)s oriented cross-ply E-glass/epoxy laminates studied were manufactured and all of the material parameters of laminated composite materials were measured experimentally. The impact testing was conducted with a specially developed vertical drop-weight testing machine. Impact tests were performed at impactor masses of 135 and 2600 g and an impact velocity of 3 m/s. The studies were carried out on plate dimensions of and , with two opposite sides clamped and the other two free and impact load

applied at the center of each plate. A numerical simulation was performed using 3DIMPACT transient dynamic finite element analysis code for calculating stresses and contact forces of the composite plates during impact along with a failure analysis for predicting the threshold of impact damage and initiation of delaminations