Ballistic Impact Analysis of Graphene Reinforced Kevlar-29 and Kevlar-129 Laminated Composites

Abstract

Aircraft goes through various high-speed hindrances like bird attacks, etc. Kevlar is increasingly used in the aviation industry to overcome such hindrances. Kevlar, an organic fibre from the family of aromatic polyamides consists of Kevlar 29, Kevlar 129, Kevlar 49 and Kevlar 149. This paper focuses on the use of Kevlar 29 and Kevlar 129 due to its low stiffness in comparison with Kevlar 49 and Kevlar 149. When pure Kevlar 29 and Kevlar 129 with 20 layers each are impacted with a 9g bullet at 900m/s velocity, the bullet perforates the laminate completely. Hence, the Kevlar layers are reinforced with graphene nanoplates. The bullet impact simulation of the ‘single-layer Kevlar 29 reinforced with single-layer graphene nanosheet’ (K29G), ‘single layer Kevlar 129 reinforced with single-layer graphene nanosheet’ (K129G), ‘double layer Kevlar 29 reinforced with double-layer graphene nanosheets’ (KK29GG) and ‘double layer Kevlar 129 reinforced with double-layer graphene nanosheets’ (KK129GG) is carried out using LS-DYNA. Maximum principal stress, effective stress, absorbed energy and displacement of the composite laminates (K29G, K129G, KK29GG and KK129GG) are used to compare the performance of these four laminates in the targeted applications. Due to its higher maximum principal stress, effective stress and lower displacement, the composite laminate K29G proves to be the apt laminate for its usage in aircrafts.