Development of an intrinsic solid-shell cohesive zone model for impact fracture of windshield laminated glass

Abstract

Glass fracture is the main failure pattern of windshield laminated glass subjected to low-velocity impact. Previous studies normally employed solid elements in conjunction with cohesive elements for the modeling of glass fracture, thereby suffering from high computational cost. This work develops an intrinsic solid-shell cohesive zone model to improve computational efficiency. The main idea is to use efficient solid-shell elements instead of solid elements for the modeling of the shell-like glass structure, because the element internal force calculation accounts for the primary part of the total computational cost. The use of an intrinsic cohesive zone model for gradual glass fracture is advocated due to its simplicity and effectiveness. Two numerical cases, i.e., a bending test of a pre-crack concrete beam and an impact test of a semispherical shell structure, are firstly conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our presented method. Then, the impact fracture simulations of windshield laminated glass subjected to a dummy pedestrian headform with different impact velocities and angles are performed. Numerical results are found to be in good agreement with experimental ones in terms of final fracture patterns and acceleration histories, which demonstrates the capacity of our presented model in impact fracture analysis of windshield laminated glass. Finally, the computational cost of the proposed model and the solid element based intrinsic CZM is compared, and it is found that the developed method can save about half of the computing time for the internal force calculation.