The influences of ply interference on ballistic impact response and energy absorption behavior of multilayered woven fabrics

Abstract

This paper presents a detailed experimental and numerical analysis aiming to investigate the ballistic impact response and energy absorption behavior of multilayered woven fabrics with different ply interference. Different levels of ply interference are provided by controlling the influencing factors such as angle-plying, stitching the constituent plies and spacing the adjacent plies. The three aforementioned designs were evaluated for their energy absorption capacity against ballistic impact with the impact velocities ranging from 300∼400 m/s. The energy absorption mechanism was studied through the combination of high-speed camera and numerical simulations in terms of fabric deformation, and evolution of energy absorption for each ply at different impact velocity. It was found that stitching the aligned systems showed the most pronounced beneficial effect on energy absorption, showing approximate 50 % ∼ 110 % increase than the quasi-isotropic system with a mismatched lay-up angle of 22.5º.This is probably because that thread stitching enables the panel to be more efficient in spreading energy to a more global extent, involving a more defined transverse deformation and a larger area of stress distribution, which is beneficial for energy absorption.