Impact behavior analysis of carbon fiber reinforced aluminum laminates based on a micro-mechanical damage model

Abstract

A micro-mechanical damage model is proposed to investigate the low-velocity impact behavior of carbon fiber reinforced aluminum laminates (CARALL). This proposed method is able to study the failure mechanisms of fiber and matrix based on their individual micro stresses, which is more precise than other macro stress damage models. Stress amplification factors are adopted to realize the rapid micro stress calculation of key points in fiber and matrix, and combined with physical failure criteria the progressive degradation of composite stiffness is realized. A nonlinear elasto-plastic model is adopted to study the deformation and fracture of aluminum sheet. The cohesive zone model with a bilinear traction-separation relation is adopted to study the delamination initiation and propagation. The finite element model of impacted CARALL is established on ABAQUS/Explicit platform, and a user-defined material subroutine (VUMAT) is written to implement this proposed model. The predicted structure responses and damage mechanisms show good agreements with experimental results, which helps to obtain the profound understanding of this new kind of hybrid material.