Current pyrotechnic separation devices are mainly made of metal materials, limiting the capacity of lightweight design in advanced launching vehicles. With the outstanding mechanical properties, such as high mass-specific strength and modulus, carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (CFRPs) have the potential to replace metal materials in pyrotechnic seperaton devices. However, to improve the seperation reliability of these pyrotechnic separation devices, there still needs further understanding on the the failure mode of CFRP composites under linear shaped charge (LSC). In this paper, cutting tests were carried out on CFRPs for the failure analysis of CFRPs under LSC, and nonlinear finite element analysis (FEA) was performed to characterize the evolution of LSC cutting in CFRPs. According to experimental simulation and numerical simulation, it can be found that the three main failure modes in CERPs while subjected to LSC jet are shear failure, delamination failure, and tensile failure. In the early cutting stage, the initial time of damage of the fiber and the matrix near the shaped charge shows less difference and the laminate is directly separated by the energy of high-speed jet. When the jet velocity decreases, the jet morphology collapses and matrix damages precede into the fiber, which would cause tensile failure mode of CFRPs. Meanwhile, the delamination in low jet speed stages is larger than that in the high jet speed stages. These studies on the failure modes of CFRPs under LSC provide important basis for the future design of CFRP-based pyrotechnic separation devices, which is important to the lightweight design of launching vehicles.

Carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) has been widely used in aerospace structures for its high strength to weight ratio and high stiffness to weight ratio. However, current pyrotechnic separation devices are mainly made of metal materials, the cutting research on CFRP composites is limited, and the effect of weakening groove on cutting results of composites is unclear under the action of shaped charge jet. In this paper, there firstly established a three-dimensional model of explosive cutting of CFRP composites by nonlinear finite element analysis (FEA), and based on the separation time, delamination, and kinetic energy of the laminate, the influence of weakening grooves on cutting results to the laminate is discussed. The results show that, in contrast to laminates with weakening grooves, laminates without weakening grooves increase the delamination of laminates. At the same time, here, we carried out the explosive cutting test on CFRP composites to verify the rationality of the simulation model. In addition, in order to obtain a better model under the action of shaped charge jet, we optimized the width and height of weakening groove by simulation calculation. Therefore, it proves that this study can guide the application of CFRP composites subjected to shaped charge jet in aerospace separation engineering.

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