Impact Damage to Composite Laminates: Effect of Impact Location

A Malhotra,F J Guild

doi:10.1007/s10443-013-9382-z

A Malhotra, F J Guild

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10443-013-9382-z

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Abstract

Accidental impact loading of Composite laminates during manufacture and in-service can occur in different locations including near the edge or on the edge of a composite structure. This paper describes investigation of the effect of impact to composite laminates and compares the damage arising from central, near edge and on edge impact events. The damage tolerance of impact damaged laminates using both compression and tension tests has been measured. These results reveal the different damage mechanisms arising from different locations of impact. These different damage mechanisms have been investigated using X-Ray computed tomography. Impact on the edge of composite laminates is found to lead to smaller damage area, but more fibre failure; the severity of this damage is not revealed in standard compression after impact tests.

Highlights

In the last decade, researchers in academia and industry have studied extensively the effects of impact damage on the damage tolerance of composite structures and this damage has been shown to introduce several design problems
The damage width for the thinner laminate was found to be larger than the width for the thicker laminate but the difference is smaller for the near edge impact at high values of incident energy
The responses for central impact are very similar to the near edge impact, with some vibrations found in the force/time response for the near edge impact which did not occur for the central impact

Summary

Introduction

Researchers in academia and industry have studied extensively the effects of impact damage on the damage tolerance of composite structures and this damage has been shown to introduce several design problems. Excellent overviews of this subject can be found in reviews by Abrate [1, 2] and Cantwell and Morton [3,4,5]. There is much published work on centre impact of thin composite laminates, typically 2 or 3 mm thick, only a.

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