Experimental and numerical studies on the impact response of damage-tolerant hybrid unidirectional/woven carbon-fibre reinforced composite laminates

Abstract

A woven Five-Harness Satin (5HS) weave with AS4 carbon fibres, and unidirectional high strength IMS60 carbon fibres were used to manufacture hybrid laminates, using resin infusion, to assess their performance in low velocity impact tests. Load/energy-time curves and load-displacement curves were extracted from the experimental data, and non-destructive Cscanning was performed on all pre-and post-impacted specimens to quantify the extent of damage incurred. A finite element-based computational damage model was developed to predict the material response of these hybrid unidirectional/woven laminates. The intralaminar damage model formulation, by necessity, consists of two sub-models, a unidirectional constitutive model and a woven constitutive model. The built-in surface-based cohesive behaviour in Abaqus/Explicit was used to define the interlaminar damage model for capturing delamination. The reliability of this model was validated using in-house experimental data obtained from standard drop-weight impact tests. The simulated reactionforce and absorbed energy showed excellent agreement with experiment results. The post-impact delamination and permanent indentation deformation were also accurately captured. The accuracy of the damage model facilitated a quantitative comparison between the performance of a hybrid unidirectional/woven (U/W) laminates and a pure unidirectional (PU) carbon-fibre reinforced composite laminates of equivalent lay-up. The hybrid laminates were shown to yield better impact resistance.

The Impact Performance of Woven-Fabric Thermoplastic and Thermoset Composites Subjected to High-Velocity Soft- and Hard-Impact Loading

“…To calculate and compare the values of the contact pressures caused by the soft-gelatine projectiles and hard aluminium-alloy projectiles, the impact behaviour of the CF/PEEK composite target was modelled. The relevant material properties of the CF/PEEK composites required for the modelling studies may be found from the literature [11,12,15,[48][49][50][51][52][53][54] and are given in Table 4.…”

“…It can be seen that the aluminum-alloy impacted CF/PEEK composite exhibited a significantly higher reaction force than the gelatineimpacted CF/PEEK composite. The maximum reaction forces associated with the soft-gelatine Table 4 The input parameters for the composite damage model [11,12,15 Fig. 15 The FE model for simulating (a) the soft-gelatine particle (PC3D) impact and (b) the hard aluminiumalloy projectile impact on the composites and the hard aluminium-alloy impacts on the CF/PEEK composites were calculated to be 4.4 kN and 7.4 kN, respectively, see Fig.…”

“…With this in mind, the impact performances of composites, such as the conventional nontoughened and toughened thermosetting epoxy-matrix composites [7][8][9][10][11], thermoplasticmatrix composites [12][13][14], and three-dimensional woven-fabric fibre composites [15][16][17], have been studied. In industrial applications, the carbon-fibre reinforced-epoxy (CF/epoxy) composites have been extensively employed in civil aircraft, due to their relatively high performance and the relative ease of manufacturing large and complex structures from this type of composite material [18,19].…”

Compressive failure of woven fabric reinforced thermoplastic composites with an open-hole: An experimental and numerical study

“…A physically-based damage model has been developed for predicting damage in woven fabric reinforced composite structures. An in-house intralaminar damage model, which includes fibre/matrix-dominated damage initiation, energy-based damage progression and nonlinear properties, was developed based on the composite damage model proposed by Falzon et al [17][18][19][20][21][22]. The in-built cohesive-surface behaviour in Abaqus/explicit was used to capture the interlaminar failure (delamination).…”

Impact Tests of UHSS Steel Welded Joints Using the Drop - Tower Impact Drop Method

“…Laminates consisting of layers of glass fibre connected to layers of graphite fibre exhibit intermediate impact strength characteristics when compared to the laminates reinforced exclusively with glass or graphite fibre. The authors of article [8] analysed dynamic deformation of aluminium foams and demonstrated that reducing the thickness of the foams, lowers impact strength, which makes it possible to classify them as materials exhibiting good impact energy absorption properties in lightweight constructions.…”