Strain rate-dependent failure modelling of impact damage in laminated CFRP structures

Abstract

This work focuses on the development, implementation, and validation of a constitutive model for unidirectional composites, aiming to numerically simulate impact damage in laminated structures. The model incorporates a failure criterion that accounts for the influence of strain rate on failure initiation and distinguishes between four failure modes. Failure initiation criteria are 3D phenomenological-based criteria according to the previous work of Puck and Schürmann (1998) and Pinho (2006). Additionally, a mesh-objective damage propagation model is implemented to simulate the impact damage. The impact simulations are performed using Abaqus/Explicit, with the constitutive model implemented through the user subroutine VUMAT. Validation of the strain rate effects on failure initiation is performed using strain rate-dependent bi-axial failure curves for IM7/8552 and AS-4/3506. The analyses indicate that the properties governing the strain rate dependence of failure initiation are consistent. Therefore, the hypothesis was tested in which the same strain rate scaling approach could be used for CFRP materials for which only static properties are available. This hypothesis was tested in high and low-velocity impact simulations at laminated IMS60/977–2 CFRP plates. The results demonstrate that the model accurately replicates the experimentally observed impact-induced contact forces and effectively captures the damaged state in the impacted plate.