Modelling soft body impact on composite structures

The paper describes recent progress on materials modelling and numerical simulation of soft body impact damage in fibre reinforced composite structures. The work is based on the application of finite element (FE) analysis codes to simulate composite shell structures under impact loads arising, for example, from bird strike on a wing leading edge. A composites ply damage mechanics model and interply delamination model have been implemented in an explicit FE code which is used to predict impact damage in shell structures. Soft body impactors such as gelatine (substitute bird) or ice (hailstones) are highly deformable on impact and flow over the structure spreading the impact load. They are modelled by a particle method in which the FE mesh is replaced by interacting particles. The failure models and code developments are applied to the numerical simulation of gas gun impact tests in which gelatine projectiles are fired at glass fabric/epoxy cylindrical shells.