Predicting Impact Damage, Residual Strength and Crashworthiness of Composite Structures

Abstract

The development of the latest generation of wide-body carbon-fibre composite passenger aircraft has heralded a new era in the utilisation of these materials. The premise of superior specific strength and stiffness, corrosion and fatigue resistance, is tempered by high development costs, slow production rates and lengthy and expensive certification programmes. Substantial effort is currently being directed towards the development of new modelling and simulation tools, at all levels of the development cycle, to mitigate these shortcomings. One of the primary challenges is to reduce the extent of physical testing, in the certification process, by adopting a 'certification by simulation' approach. In essence, this aspirational objective requires the ability to reliably predict the evolution and progression of damage in composites. The aerospace industry has been at the forefront of developing advanced composites modelling tools. As the automotive industry transitions towards the increased use of composites in mass-produced vehicles, similar challenges in the modelling of composites will need to be addressed, particularly in the reliable prediction of crashworthiness. While thermoset composites have dominated the aerospace industry, thermoplastics composites are likely to emerge as the preferred solution for meeting the high-volume production demands of passenger road vehicles. This keynote paper outlines recent progress and current challenges in the development of finite-element-based predictive modelling tools for capturing impact damage, residual strength and energy absorption capacity of thermoset and thermoplastic composites for crashworthiness assessments.

Predicting the Compression-After-Impact (CAI) strength of damage-tolerant hybrid unidirectional/woven carbon-fibre reinforced composite laminates

“…The resulting damaged samples are then clamped within a support fixture, and loaded in compression, to determine the residual strength. A consistent relation between impact energy and CAI strength of composite laminates has been shown in previous studies [11][12][13][14].…”

Comment on “A tensorial based progressive damage model for fibre reinforced polymers”

“…A number of papers by Falzon's research group [2,3,8,10] have reported excellent correlation between experimental impact tests and predictive computational modelling. Moreover, recent developments have further demonstrated the ability of this damage model to accurately predict compression-afterimpact behaviour [3] and assess the crushing response of composite specimens [4,9,11]. These studies attest to the robustness and stability of the damage model.…”

A Numerical and Experimental Study on the Impact Behavior of a Carbon-Fiber-Reinforced Thermoplastic Poly (Methyl Methacrylate) Composite

“…Thermoplastic composites, compared with thermoset ones, show a significant higher production speed and better repairability and recyclability. These characteristics make thermoplastic composites valuable alternatives to thermoset composites and metals in many sectors, especially in automotive industry [1]. Acrylic resins are lightweight thermosetting plastics with excellent wetting properties and a high strength, making them useful for ultralight orthopaedic appliances too.…”