Characterization and Modeling of Blast Resistance Behavior of Carbon Composites

The vulnerability of aerospace structures subjected to near field blast loading plays a critical role for aviation safety and security evaluation. The primary objective of a recent collaboration study conducted by the Transportation Security Laboratory (TSL) of the Department of Homeland Security and the Combat Capabilities Development Command (CCDC)-Army Research Laboratory (ARL) was to perform close-in blast experimental characterization and computational modeling of dynamic deformation and damage progression of aerospace materials. The results of this experimental/numerical study for lightweight materials, including aluminum and carbon composites are presented in this paper. A recent paper [1] reported that a series of close-in shock-hole blast tests on carbon composite panels were tested and correlated with simulated results using the LS-DYNA®- Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) method. The computational constitutive model integrated within LS-DYNA® was validated to characterize the progressive failure behavior in carbon laminates subjected to close-in blast loading conditions with reasonable accuracy. However, the ALE approach is computationally expensive and limited to be used for complicated aerospace composite structures consisting of composite panels and stiffeners. Thus, in this study, a simplified approach for predicting blast loading using ConWep code has been selected and validated for the vulnerability evaluation of aerospace structures using composite materials.