Paper number 227

STUDY OF IMPACTED COMPOSITE STRUCTURES BY MEANS OF THE RESPONSE SURFACE METHODOLOGY

F. Collombet¹, L. Guillaumat¹, J.L. Lataillade¹, P. Davies² and A. Torres-Marques³

1LA.M.E.F.I.P.-E.N.S.A.M., Bordeaux, France
2Laboratoire Matériaux Marins, IFREMER, Brest, France
3I.N.E.G.I., Porto, Portugal

Summary

An experimental method, called the response surface method, is used to study the response of laminated and sandwich composite structures under impact loading (low velocity-high mass). For the laminated composites, the importance of the mass, velocity of the striker is studied for different responses such as the contact force between striker and composite structure, the displacement of the projectile, the time of contact and the damage within the composite structure. For the sandwich composites, the influence of the span of the structure is additionally considered. The evolution of the contact force is more particularly analysed. The results illustrate how this technique improves the understanding of the behaviour of impacted composite structures for designing. They underline that the kinetic energy of the striker should not always considered as a representative parameter of the studied response of composite structures under impact loading.

Keywords

impact, laminated structures, sandwich structures, response surface method, cracking, delamination, drop-weight set-up, Doehlert matrix.