Engineering approach for predicting post-impact compressive strength of laminated composites

Abstract

An engineering approach is presented to analyse the whole process of damage initiation and development for laminated composites under impact loading as well as compressive loading after impact using the three-dimensional progressive damage theory. The real impact damage status of laminated composites is employed to analyse the residual compressive strength instead of the artificial premises adopted by traditional methods. A comparison of impact damage area and residual compressive strength from numerical simulations and experimental tests is given, which shows a good agreement with each other. Moreover, large numbers of experiments for obtaining the impact damage status parameters can be avoided by this engineering approach. A parametric modelling programme package based on the analytical method has been developed.