A nonlinear strain rate and pressure-dependent micro-mechanical composite material model for impact problems

Abstract

A micro-mechanical composite material model is developed to simulate the behavior of unidirectional composites under impact loading conditions in the nonlinear finite element solver (LS-DYNA®). The nonlinear strain rate and pressure dependency in the composite material model is accounted by the resin, which uses previously developed state variable viscoplastic equations. These equations have been originally developed for metals; however, these are modified to account for the significant contributions of hydrostatic stresses typically observed in polymers. The material model also uses a continuum damage mechanics (CDM) based failure model to incorporate the progressive post-failure behavior. A set of Weibull distribution functions are used to quantify this behavior, and a methodology of assigning physical significance to the choice of damage/softening parameters used in these functions is presented. The impact response of composite laminate plates has been simulated and compared to the experiments. It has been observed that the predicted results compare favorably to the experiments.