Numerical Simulations of Low Velocity Impact Damage Onset and Evolution in Carbon Composite Laminates

Laminated composite structures, during their service life, can be exposed to low velocity impact events which can induce internal damage hardly detectable by visual inspections. This internal damage can cause reductions in strength by propagating under loading conditions[1-7]. In this paper, focused on impact induced damage formation and evolution in laminated composite structures, simulations have been performed, which takes into account the on-set and the growth of intra-laminar and inter-laminar damages in composite panels undergoing an impact event and a post-impact compressive load, by adopting a combination of explicit-implicit numerical approaches.