A mesoscale modelling approach of glass fibre/Elium acrylic woven laminates for low velocity impact simulation

Abstract

This study presents a numerical mesoscale approach to simulate the damage and failure mechanisms of woven laminated composites under low velocity impact loading conditions. First, some measurements were made on samples to obtain a realistic reproduction of the microstructure. This allows relating failure mechanisms in composite laminates with their geometry and topology. A three-dimensional Hashin criterion was developed to investigate the impact behaviour, by accounting for both intralaminar and interlaminar damages. Four failure modes were considered relatively to fibre damage initiation in tension and compression and Puck criteria was employed to capture the initiation of the yarn’s matrix damage. The matrix surrounding undulated yarns were taken into account by an elastoplastic behaviour with maximum-stress failure criteria. Good correlation between numerical and experimental results demonstrated the robustness and the accuracy of the proposed multiscale approach.