Experimental and numerical investigations of low velocity impact on functionally graded circular plates

Abstract This paper addresses low-velocity impact behaviour of functionally graded clamped circular plates. An experimental work was carried out to investigate the impact behaviour of FG circular plates which is composed of ceramic (SiC) and metal (Al) phases varying through the plate thickness by using a drop-weight impact test system. The influence of the compositional gradient exponent and impactor velocity on the contact forces and absorbed energies was concentrated on the tests. The explicit finite element method, in which a volume fraction based elastic–plastic model (the TTO model) was implemented for the functionally graded materials, was used to simulate their drop-weight impact tests. Effective material properties at any point inside FGM plates were determined using Mori–Tanaka scheme. The experimental and numerical results indicated that the compositional gradient exponent and impactor velocity more effective on the elasto-plastic response of the FG circular plates to a low-velocity impact loading. The comparison at the theoretical and experimental results showed that the use of the TTO model in modelling the elasto-plastic behaviour of FG circular plates results in increasing deviations between the numerical and experimental contact forces for ceramic-rich compositions whereas it becomes more successful for metal-rich compositions.