The behaviour of fibre-reinforced composites subjected to a soft impact-loading: An experimental and numerical study

Abstract

The present paper presents experimental and numerical studies on the behaviour of composite laminates subject to impact loading by soft projectiles to represent the impact of a small bird or hail-stone. In this research, gas-gun experiments are performed to study woven carbon-fibre reinforced poly (ether-ether ketone) (CF/PEEK) composites subjected to an impact by soft-gelatine projectiles. In addition, woven carbon-fibre reinforced epoxy (CF/epoxy) composite specimens are also evaluated using gelatine projectiles to investigate the effect of the matrix system on the impact response of the composites. A high-speed camera is employed to capture the deformation of the projectiles and a three-dimensional (3D) Digital Image Correlation (DIC) system is used to record the deformation of the impacted composite specimens. A Finite Element (FE) model is developed to simulate the impact by a soft projectile on the composite specimens. Good agreement is shown between the predictions from using the FE model and the experimental results.