Numerical Energy Absorption Assessment of Composite Materials

In order to meet the stringent crashworthy regulations and to improve the fuel economy more and more composite materials have been used in automotive industry. The damage and the corresponding failure mechanisms of the composite materials during loading are entirely different from the isotropic materials. The numerical modeling of the above and prediction of the corresponding performance parameters of a composite structure are very important. Normally, the numerical modeling of the composite structures was done with a single layer of shell or solid elements. However, the approach of using single layer of elements cannot capture the effect of delamination which causes the split of the composite structures through thickness. In order to prove this an axial impact study was conducted on cylindrical pultruded glass polyester composite tubes. Furthermore, a new innovative approach was adopted using multiple layers of shell and solid elements to predict the accurate energy absorption and the corresponding failure patterns of the composite tubes. Furthermore, to capture the delamination in each lay-up zero thickness cohesive elements have been introduced. The results from this numerical approach were verified and validated with the experimental results.