In-Plane Low Velocity Impact Behavior of GFRP Laminate

Abstract

FRP laminates are used in several industries such as automobile, aircraft’s, spacecraft’s, defense and etc.., where high strength-to-weight ratio is the primary criteria. FRP laminates offer high design and material tailoring properties but are highly susceptible to delamination and debonding under out-of-plane low velocity impact which induces barely visible impact damage (BVID) inside the structures. A lot of research investigation is going on related to damage resistance behavior of FRP laminates under out-of-plane impact loading. But very less concentration is paid to the FRP laminates behavior under in-plane low impact loading. In this numerical analysis in-plane low velocity impact loading is carried out on a bidirectional plain woven glass fiber reinforced epoxy laminate (GFRP) using LS-DYNA. A hemispherical impactor of mass 5kg and diameter of 10mm is impacted at 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5m/sec velocity on [(00/900)/(+450/-450)/(+450/-450)/(00/900)]S layup design. Two boundary conditions complete edge and corner constraining boundary conditions are considered for numerical analysis. Force vs. time, energy vs. time, displacement vs. time plots are used to evaluate the analysis.