Studying delamination in composite laminates using shell elements and a strain-rate-dependent micro-mechanical model

Abstract

The effectiveness of studying inter-laminar delamination in laminated composites with the help of thickness-stretch shell elements which utilize a 3-D material model sub-routine as compared to the traditional plane-stress shell elements has been investigated using a non-linear finite element solver (LS-DYNA®). A strain-rate-dependent micro-mechanical material model using ply-level progressive failure criteria has been used to simulate the initiation and propagation of delamination. A methodology of assigning physical significance to the choice of damage parameters has been presented. The numerical delamination growth has been qualitatively analyzed against the experimental C-scan images for multiple impact events on different composite plates.