Micrometeoroid impact-induced damage of GLAss fiber REinforced aluminum fiber-metal laminates

Abstract

Through several decades of development, engineers have made the GLAss fiber REinforced aluminum material fit for aviation structures, e.g., the fuselage of Airbus A380. A request like ‘GLARE + impact’ in a web search engine gives hundreds if not thousands of scientific articles address the high impact resistance of GLAss fiber REinforced aluminum. GLAss fiber REinforced aluminum can be a suitable material for shielding systems to protect manned and unmanned spacecraft against micrometeoroids and orbital debris. However, it is hard to comprehend a rational reason why a thorough search in the relevant literatures yielded only a couple of articles focused on the ballistic impact response of GLAss fiber REinforced aluminum. Handful of studies have interrogated the damage of GLAss fiber REinforced aluminum using analytical, numerical and experimental methods. No physical model, yet has been proposed and validated to capture the damage of GLAss fiber REinforced aluminum upon collision with micrometeoroids. This study, therefore, introduced a new numerical model based on the smoothed particle hydrodynamics and the finite element method. The model was able to predict the exorbitant strain-rate of GLAss fiber REinforced aluminum. Besides, the model could approximate the cataclysmic amount of energy dissipated in the shockwave-induced collapse of GLAss fiber REinforced aluminum. The model assumed that the behavior of the S2-glass/FM94-epoxy composite material was orthotropic elastic prior to the onset of damage. After the damage initiation, the energy-based orthotropic softening governed the damage accumulation in the composite material. Looking at the outputs of the model, an impact of a 2 mm 2024-T3 aluminum sphere on a GLAss fiber REinforced aluminum 5–6/5–0.4 plate led to petals in the front aluminum layer, spallation of the rear aluminum layer and buckling of the inner aluminum layers. By contrast, the S2-glass/FM94-epoxy composite laminates conserved the imparted energy through membrane stretching before had been pierced. A test campaign, with the aid of a two-stage light-gas gun facility, was pursued to assess the model accuracy. It was found that the model predicted many of the experimental observations with a high degree of fidelity.