An improved model for the damped impact of composite materials applicable to wind turbine blades

Abstract

Composite materials are used in manufacturing a vast game of products, from usual objects, medical devices, aerospatial parts to military equipment. One of the features considered when a composite material is designed as target aims the energy dissipation with respect to the projectile. The paper presents an improved alternative of a model which is broadly used in the impact of projectile and composite target. The initial model has the weakness that does not present the hysteresis loop. The improvement of the model consists in including a nonlinear damper placed between the projectile and the target, the damping force being simultaneously proportional to the impact velocity and the elastic force. The new model has a hysteresis loop closed in the origin. The proposed model is applied for concrete situations and the results are presented in graphical manner.