Damage development due to impact needs to be understood to evaluate the consequences of impact on composite structures. This study concentrates on modelling and measuring damage development due to low velocity impact on thick industrial composites made from glass fibre epoxy by vacuum-assisted resin infusion. Cross-plied laminates were tested with different impact energy and different number of interfaces (clustering). Results were compared to a 3D finite element analysis. Interfaces and their damage development were modelled with cohesive elements. Intra ply properties were modelled by progressive failure analysis. Many elements and large memory use were needed to obtain sufficient modelling accuracy. However, all input parameters of the model were based on widely available and independently obtained material properties. Impact force and time to initiate damage and maximum force were measured and related to impact energy and clustering. Damage development was monitored optically in the translucent material for all test cases. The results show that the numerical model using only simple and independently measured material data was able to predict the impact behaviour for the different energies and different stacking sequences.
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