117" INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COMPOSITE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Numerical Simulation of Impact Resistance of CFRP Plates with Different Fiber Angles Furgan Ahmad!, Fethi Abbasi", Jung-Wuk Hong’ Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, Dhofar University, Salalab, Oman e-mail; fahmad@du.eduom 2URMSSDT-ENSITunis, 5 Avenue Taha Hussein, BP, 56, Bab Manara, Tunisia ‘Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, KAIST, Daejeon, South Korea Abstract The present study deals with the numerical simulation of composite plates with varies fiber angles under low velocity impact tests through commercial explicit FE code LS-DYNA. Two types of specimens (cross-ply and quasi-isotropic) are tested by using a drop-tower machine under the same level of impact energy and modeled by FE. The final results obtained from FE simulation have good agreement with the experimental results in terms of time-force curves, time-energy curves and impact damage Keywords Fiber angles, low velocity impact, Is-dyna, impact damage 1, Introduction Carbon fiber based polymer composite are becoming more common in recent years in the construction of many ground and space vehicles particularly for the aerospace structural components. For the aerospace structures, where less weight is taken as critical aspect that's why aircraft components such as flight controls, fairings and spoilers were developed from composite materials during the 1960s [1] As compare to conventional materials, the impact behavior of composite materials under impact loads of foreign objects is always consider as a major concern that cause damages (matrix cracking, fiber-mattix fiber breakage and delamination) (2]. It is well-know, the impact response of CFRP composite material is mainly depends upon the stacking orientation of the plies. Proper selection of plies orientation of CFRP. composite materials is necessary to provide a good impact resistance to composite structures [4]. Experimental research work and numerical simulation are two main techniques which are available in literature to understand the impact response of composite laminates. There are many general purpose FE codes are commonly available and LS-DYNA is one of them that is used in this study. Heims etal. [13] used LS-DYNA and investigated the impact behavior of CFRP laminated composite plates of 24 plies with and without compressive preloading, Zike et al. [19] investigate the impact response of composite material under impact loading by using the FE model. The main objective of this study is to get insight into the influence of the stacking sequence on the impact resistance of the CFRP composite plates. Firstly, a series of experimental impact tests was performed on two types of composite lay-up using same boundary conditions. Secondly, 6117" INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COMPOSITE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY composi laminated plates were modeled and have been analyzed by using the commercial FE code Us DYNA to study the eff cts of stacking sequence on maximum force, impact energy and damage pattern in term of matrix cracking and delamination. 2, Material and Experimental Setup ‘Two types of specimens with different lay-ups were used for the experimental tests and fabricated from the pre-impregnated unidirectional carbon fiber/epoxy tape. All the specimens are fabricated under the same curing process (cured for 2 hours at 350°F temperature and 100 psi pressure) from large 8 plies CF/Epoxy composite panels and then cut to produce square laminated plates 125 mm side with nominal total thickness of 1.5 mm. In this study, specimens are referred as cross-ply specimen [0/90/0/90}: (type A) and quasicisotropic specimens (type Bi [0/45/~45/90},, type Bs (0/45/90/~45], and type By (45/=45/0/90],) are used for experimental tests, Mechanical properties of unidirectional lamina are given in following Table 1 ‘Table 1 Properties of the CFRP composite Properties | __fy an ar on Xe Yr a Value 142 GPa | 7.79 GPa | 0.34] 40 GPa | 2.55 GPa | 2251 MPa_| 58.47 MPa ] 69.36 MPa Fig 1 Experimental setup used for impact test All experimental tests were conducted on a newly designed vertical mini-drop tower testing machine as shown in Fig 1. The testing machine is equipped with sophisti ed instruments (load cell and data acquisition system) to record the impact test data, Composite specimens were mounted on a rectangular steel plate which has a circular cut of 75 mm (diameter) and clamped with rubber-tipped clamps at four comers in order to stop the movement of composite plate, A hemispherical shape impactor diameter of 11 mm and total mass of 3.44 kg was dropped from maximum allowable height of testing machine of 0.70 m to impact at the center of each specimen. Three experimental tests were performed for each specimen type under the same evel of impact energy of 23.62 J. 66117" INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COMPOSITE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 3. Numerical Simulation Among the available material models for composite lamina in LS-DYNA, Mat_059 material model based on the Cheng and Hallquist failure criteria (6] adopted and each ply of the composite plate modeled as 3D single layer as shown in Fig 2. This material model is able to simulate the progressive failure of composite on the basis of the 3D stress based failure criterion and based on the orthotropic-clasticity up to composite ply failure which can be described by the Equation | fe} = [C]{o} @ 1 Mz 3 5 9 9 Ex En Ba 1 -y, 9 0 0 €22 S22 _ ess _ a = (0=)y8h = 4TE (c]= @ ae ta symmetric Ye Te where [C] is the compliance matrix and and {oy} and {e,j} [ij = 1,2,3] are 6 stress and strain components respectively. The tiebreak contact based on the knowledge of shear (SFLS) and normal failure stresses (NFLS) Contact Automatic One Way Surface to Surface Ticbreak was used between each layers. During the simulation, the nodal stresses were monitored and to check delamination following failure criteria (Equation ¢ 6, and G, are the current shear and normal failure stresses. 3) was implemented. whe 1 @) Al the composite layers are made from same material of carbon fiber/epoxy, so for the contact between layers a penalty-based method was used Contacts of the composite plate with impactor, steel support and rubber-tipped clamps were simulated using the soft constrained-based contact algorithms. To get the correct mechanical behavior of all parts and good contact formation, a very fine mesh was assigned to all parts of simulation model and only near the impact point for the composite layers as shown in Fig 2. er117" INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COMPOSITE ‘SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Fig 2 Numer al Simulation model for low velocity impact test 4, Results and Discussions For ctoss-ply specimen (type ), after Hertzain failure (small undulation in the beginning) the time- force curve moves to maximum value. For cross-ply specimen (type 4), after Hertzain failure the time-force curve move to maxinuum value with undulations corresponding to maximum damage in the plate as shown in Fig3. 4 t Timo (mese) Fig 3 Impact force history diagram in experiment and simulation for all types of specimens After getting the peak level, the force curve started to drop down which indicates that the impactor is bouncing back. The time-force curve obtained from simulation model shows the same trend for type 4 specimen with small deviation in the peak level, For perforated quasi-isotropic composite plates cases, time- force curves reached their peak levels with the very small undulations in a short period of time and cause quick development of damage in plates. Then after the peak load the curves dropped down with undulations corresponding to maximum damage, a sharp fall of time-force curves occurred called perforation point. ‘Overall time-force curves trend matches again very satisfactorily between experimental and simulation results ee117" INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COMPOSITE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY as shown in Fig. 3. Initially, the energies absorbed by type A and B specimens were low as shown in Fig 4 then the time-energy curve for crosseply specimen progressively increase up to peak level after that start to decreased up to a certain level corresponding to rebound of impactor. When the impactor completely detached from the plate, time-energy curve became linear. Impact energies absorbed by the type B composite plates are almost same, but after transition time, the time-energy curves is continuing to rise due to the contact between the impactor surface and the perforated specimens. Eneay Wh (a) Delamination in type A specimen (b) Delamination in type Bi specimen Fig 5 Comparison of experimental and simulation damage area for type A and Bi specimen 5. Damage Analysis 6117" INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COMPOSITE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Impactor did not penetrate or perforate through the cross-ply specimen but after making a clear dent ‘on the impact face rebounded back. Different damage phenomena such as matrix cracking and crushing, small delamination and fiber failure were observed in impact tests. Similar damage pattem was predicted by the FE ‘model and represented by the bright area in Fig 5(a). A clear more or less circular hole appeared with matrix and fiber damage on impacted face of quasi-isotropic specimens by the penetration of impactor. A complex damage coupled with matrix cracking, fiber breakage and delamination due to large mismatch in the bending stiffness was observed in the impact region on the back faces of type B specimen as shown in Fig. 5(b) for type B; specimen. All the type specimens show almost similar damage shapes on front and back faces, delamination areas for type B specimens are well predicted from the numerical analysis and comparable with the experimental test result 6. Conclusion A series of low velocity experimental test was performed which showed that the fiber orientation has a major effect on the impact resistance of composite plates. Type 4 composite plate show maximum resistance to impact compared to the type B specimens. The numerical simulation results showed a good agreement with the experimental results in terms of time-force and time-energy curves. The effect of the stacking sequence could be observed in the numerical simulation as well. References 1, Nayak, N.V.: Composite materials in aerosp: applications. Int. J. Sci, Resear. Pub. 4, (2014). 2. Perillo, G., Vedivikm N.P., Eehtermeyer, A.T.: Damage development in stitch bonded GRP composite plates under low velocity impact: Experimental and numerical results. J. Compos. Mater. 49, 601-615 (2 015). Seyed, A.Y., Liaw, B.: Influences of thickness and stacking sequence on ballistic impact behaviors of GL ARE 5 FML plates: Part I-experimental studies. J. Compos. Mater. 48, 2011-2021 (2014). 4, Heimbs, S., Heller, S., Middendorf, P., Hathnel, F., WeiBe, J.: Low velocity impact on CFRP plates with ¢ ompressive preload: Test and modeling. Int. J. Impact. Eng. 36, 1182-1193 (2009). 5. Zike, S., Kalnins, K., Ozolins, O., Knite, M.: An experimental and numerical study of low velocity impa ct of unsaturated polyester/glass fibre composite, Mater. Sci, 17, 384-390 (2011). 6. Cheng, W., Hallquist, J.: Implementation of three-dimensional composite failure model into DYNA3D. L. ivermore Software Technology Corporation (2004). 1