Residual tension behavior and damage evolution mechanisms of fiber metal laminates with various low-velocity impacted damage

Abstract

This paper mainly investigates the initial low-velocity impact behavior and the residual tension performance of FMLs with different composite layer directions through experimental and numerical methods. First, the detailed studies for the impact response and failure behavior of FMLs under different impact loadings are carried out experimentally, including various impact energies and impact numbers. Then, the post-impact tension behavior of FMLs with various impacted damage are further characterized through tension tests. Meanwhile, an integrated numerical model in virtue of VUMAT subroutine in ABAQUS is developed to simulate the impact and post-impact tension behavior of FMLs. The Hashin and Yeh failure criteria are employed to predict the complex failure modes of composite laminates, and the cohesive model is utilized to simulate the delamination damage between metal alloy and composite laminates. The reliability and accuracy of the integrated model can be demonstrated through comparison with the experimental results. Subsequently, the progressive damage evolution process of FMLs during the loading can be characterized in detail from the numerical predictions. It can be demonstrated that the aluminum alloy plays a decision role in the protection of structure perforation, while the composite laminates mainly dissipate the impact energy through the complex failure modes.