Failure mechanism based modelling of impact on fabric reinforced composite laminates based on shell elements

Abstract A shell element based modelling strategy for simulating impact on fabric reinforced laminated composites within the framework of the Finite Element Method is presented. Thereby, each ply of the laminate is represented by its own layer of shell elements. The interfaces in-between are discretised by cohesive zone elements. Material nonlinearities within plies, i.e. fibre rupture, matrix cracking and plasticity-like effects, and interfaces, i.e. delamination, are accounted for by appropriate constitutive laws. Impact simulations of a rectangular laminated composite plate with quasi-isotropic layup in a drop tower test setup are conducted. The predictions are based on material parameters partly from corresponding material data sheets and partly estimated from the literature. Thus, no inverse model calibration is applied. The acquired simulation results are validated with accompanying experiments. The predicted spatial distribution of ply damage and delaminations, as well as the associated energy absorption agree very well with the experimental results. The approach shows excellent performance in terms of computational efficiency such that simulations of the impact behaviour of structural composite components become feasible.