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Composite Structures
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a r t i c l e
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Article history:
Available online 18 May 2015
Keywords:
Composite laminates
Delamination
Damage prediction
Low-velocity impact
Numerical simulation
a b s t r a c t
This paper presents a damage analysis process of composite laminates subjected to low-velocity impact.
Drop weight tests were carried out on specimens with two kinds of stacking sequence. Ultrasonic C-Scan
was used to investigate the delamination area of each interface. Numerical models were built based on a
damage model where cohesive contact method was involved. The efciency of delamination modeling
was discussed and the damage model was validated. The results of the FEM were found to agree well with
experimental observation. According to the results, a prediction process of delamination shape was made
for composite laminates under low-velocity impact. The delamination area was found to distribute symmetrically around the impact point while the shape is related to the ply angles of the layers close to the
interface. The prediction was proved to have good accuracy and efciency.
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Delamination is one of the common failure modes in composite
laminates. It appears in the interface of two adjacent layers and can
signicantly reduce the compression strength of laminated structures. One of the main elements that lead to delamination is
low-velocity impact. Impact with low velocity will cause excessive
stress cross the interface of layers with different ply angles and
delamination appeared after the failure of interface material.
Since delamination always takes place inside composite layers,
it is difcult to characterize it without breaking the laminated
structure. Therefore, the prediction of delamination in composite
laminates became necessary during the service period of composite structures.
Studies have been done throughout the world to reveal the
delamination damage behavior in composite laminates.
Generally, they can be divided into two categories: experimental
analysis, and numerical analysis.
A large amount of experiments were carried out on the damage
behavior of composite laminates. Tita [1] tested three kinds of
composite plates with typical stacking sequences under different
impact energies. The mechanical behavior of the specimens was
classied by the ratio of absorbed energy versus impact energy.
Matrix crack and delamination were found when the fraction of
291
11
F tf
F cf
r11
X
2
r11
2
XC
P 1 r11 P 0
P 1 r11 6 0
Matrix damage:
XT
F tm
G ft
0
110
11t
11
F cm
r22
2
YT
r22
YC
2
s12
SL
2
s12
SL
2
P 1 r22 P 0
P 1 r22 6 0
292
a. Mode I
b. Mode II
c. Mode III
ber was regarded broken in the element. Both ber and matrix
will not sustain the tensile load and the tensile stiffness along
the rst principle axis of the material reduced to zero. The equivalent method is appropriate because the ber mainly sustain the
longitudinal load while the matrix sustain the transverse one.
2.2. Inter-laminar damage
m0
The cohesive contact method was used to simulate the delamination between layers of composite laminates. The basis of the
method is the cohesive behavior interaction of two adjacent surfaces. The traction stress and separation displacement of the nodes
on the surfaces are governed by tractionseparation law. Similar
with the intra-laminar damage models, the tractionseparation
law is composed by damage criterion and damage evolution.
tn
Kn
6 7 6
t 4 ts 5 4 0
Ks
tt
32
dn
76 7
0 54 ds 5
Kt
dt
t is the traction stress, d is the separation displacement and K represents the stiffness of interaction. The three directions correspond
to the three fracture modes which are shown in Fig. 2.
A quadratic separation law was used to control the damage criterion of delamination. In the law, damage is assumed to initiate
when the quadratic interaction function reaches one, which is presented below.
hdn i
d0n
!2
ds
d0s
!2
dt
d0t
!2
P1
d0n ; d0s and d0t represent the peak values of the contact separation,
when the separation is either purely along the contact normal or
purely in the rst or the second shear direction, respectively. In
order to describe the evolution of damage under a combination of
normal and shear separations across the interface, effective separation dm is introduced.
dm
q
hdn i2 d2s d2t
293
GCn
GC GC
s
t
GCs GCn
GCs GCn
!g
GCn ; GCs and GCt are critical fracture energies required to cause failure
in the normal, the rst, and the second shear directions while g is a
cohesive property parameter.
3. Experimental analysis
Drop weight impact tests were carried out based on
ASTM-D7136. The standard is a test method for evaluating the damage resistance of a ber-reinforced polymer matrix composite to a
drop-weight impact event. The laminate plate was manufactured
with T700/3234 UD carbon/epoxy composite. According to the
standard, the specimen was cut into a plate with a size of
150 100 mm, and clipped on a rigid supporting structure with a
rectangular cut of 125 75 mm in the center. The low-velocity
impact was made by InstronDynatup 9250HV drop weight
machine. The punch, with a diameter of 16 mm, was made of aluminum. The impact energy varies with the weight and drop height
of the punch. The setup for impact tests were presented in Fig. 4.
Two specimens were tested under different impact energies.
Parameters of the tests are listed in Table 1.
Curves of impact force versus time and displacement were
obtained through the load sensor and the displacement sensor,
Table 1
Test parameters.
Specimen
no.
Thickness
(mm)
Stacking sequence
Impact energy
(J)
A
B
2.5
3.25
[45/0/0/45/0/45/0/45/0/0]S
11.30 J
[45/0/0/0/45/90/45/0/0/45/90/ 20.09 J
45/0]S
as presented in Fig. 5. After the drop weight tests, the dent depth
of the impact point on each specimen was measured using a
micro-digital indicator. The visual damage on the surface of specimen A is presented in Fig. 6.
Matrix crack and ber failure appeared at the impact point,
while small bulges were found on the back surface, which indicates
delamination of the bottom layer. In order to investigate the
delamination area directly, C-Scan technique was used. The results
of specimen The specimens were examined under an ultrasonic
scanning microscope made in Germany. Delamination areas were
obtained layer by layer along the thickness direction of specimen
A (Fig. 7). The experimental results will be discussed more specifically in Section 5.
4. Numerical analysis
4.1. Efciency analysis of delamination modeling
Based on the inter-laminar damage criterion and evolution
introduced in Section 2.2, the delamination can be simulated by
cohesive behavior interaction of two adjacent surfaces. The result
will be more accurate if we dened cohesive contact in each pair
of adjacent layers. However, when a cohesive behavior was introduced into an interface, the computational speed would be slowed
down. Therefore, it is necessary to nd out how many layers
should be taken into account with cohesive contact.
In the study of Heimbs [29], conclusion was made that more
delamination interfaces in the model will lead to higher accuracy
and computational cost. The author suggested that for a 17-ply
laminate, a 6-interface model was accurate enough, although
specic reasons were not mentioned.
In this paper, ve models were built to nd the most suitable
number of cohesive interfaces. Since test results have shown that
delamination just took place between the layers away from the
impact surface, we introduce cohesive contact into the laminate
gradually from the bottom. For example, the contact information
of model 3 is presented in Fig. 8. The layers of the laminate are
Fig. 5. Curves of impact force versus time (a) and displacement (b) obtained from the tests.
294
a. Impact side
b. Back side
tie
cohesive
contact
Impact side
layer 8
layer 7
layer 6
layer 5
layer 4
layer 3
layer 2
layer 1
295
Model
No.
Delamination area
Layer 12
Layer 23
Time
Consuming
54min
58min
63min
83min
92min
1700 kg/m3
Density
Elastic
properties
Strength
Fracture
energy
Inter-laminar
Layer 45
Table 4
Mechanical parameters of T700/3234 UD composite.
Intra-laminar
Layer 34
Elastic
properties
Strength
Fracture
energy
U1=U2=U3=0
delamination will not take place between the layers with the same
ply angle, the layers were tied together.
The calculation costs 32 h for specimen A and 37 h for specimen
B. The results of numerical simulation are presented in Section 5.
5. Results and discussion
5.1. Impact response of composite plates
Time history curves of impact force are shown in Fig. 10. The
black and red curves represent the experimental and numerical
result respectively. Good agreement can be found in both
specimens.
The dent depth of the impact point was listed in Table 5. It can
be found that the dent depth obtained from simulation is smaller
than the value measured by the micrometer. This phenomenon
should attribute to the damage model used in numerical simulation. In the damage model, only elastic behavior is considered for
the composite material. In order to simulate the real deformation
of composite materials, plastic behavior should be taken into
account. In the study of Chen [30], a combined elastoplastic damage model was proposed to simulate the plastic deformations of
composite layers. Irreversible deformations are allowed in the
model which includes the yield criterion, plastic ow rule, hardening rule and the hardening law.
U1=U2=U3=0
The delamination areas obtained through simulation were compared with the image acquired from C-Scan. In order to present the
delamination area more clearly, an image processing method
based on Matlab and Image Pro was adopted. The accurate correlation between experimental and numerical results tends to conrm
the relevance of the damage analysis model.
In the studies before, delamination was found along the ber
direction of the layer below the interface. This law was proved
once again by the results presented in Figs. 11 and 12. However,
it should be noticed that the delamination shapes are not the same
for interlayer 3|4 in specimen A and interlayer 4|5 in specimen B,
although the ber directions of the layers below the interfaces
296
A
B
Error
Experimental result
Numerical result
0.85
1.42
0.64
1.04
24.7%
26.8%
Table 6
Prediction process of delamination shape.
Ply angle
0
45
Delamination predict
A
B
45
0
B
A
B
0
45
45
0
45
45
B
B
90
0
C-Scan result
297
6. Conclusions
A delamination analysis process for composite laminates under
low-velocity impact was presented in this paper. A damage model
which considered both intra-laminar and inter-laminar damage
was proposed. Experimental analysis was carried out through drop
weight tests. Ultrasonic C-Scan technique was used to reveal the
delamination appeared in the interfaces.
Numerical models were built based on the damage model. The
efciency of delamination modeling was discussed. It can be concluded that when cohesive contact was introduced into an interface of a laminate structure, the delamination area of the top two
interfaces with cohesive contact are inaccurate. In order to obtain
a reliable delamination area, two more interfaces under the concerned one should be taken into account with cohesive contact.
Finite element models were also used to validate the damage
models. The accurate correlation between experimental and
298
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