Design and modelling of composite structures under high velocity impact

The paper describes recent progress on materials modelling and numerical simulation of impact damage in fibre reinforced composite structures. This contributes to an important Workshop theme, namely the development of fast, reliable design tools for evaluating and later certifying composite fuselage structures under complex load conditions. The work is based on the application of finite element (FE) analysis codes to simulte composite shell structures under impact loads. An improved composites ply damage mechanics model and interply delamination model have been implemented in an explicit FE code which was used to predict impact damage in shell structures. The failure models and code developments are validated by comparing numerical simulations with gas gun impact test data on idealised composite aircraft structures such as cylindrical shells and sandwich panels