Study of Constituent Effect on the Failure Response of Fiber Reinforced Composites to Impact Loading with the Material Point Method

Abstract It is still not clear how the constituent properties and arrangements in fiber reinforced composites (FRC) could affect the impact response involving failure evolution quantitatively. Recent reports on mesoscopic modeling via the material point method (MPM) for textile-based FRC have demonstrated that the macroscopic residual velocity as obtained with the model-based simulation matches very well with available experimental data for projectile impact/penetration problems, even if all the FRC constituents are modeled as linear elastic with the maximum tensile strain failure criterion. A quantitative investigation via the MPM is therefore performed to explore the effect of constituent modeling and configuration on the textile-based FRC response to impact. It is found that the orientation of mesoscopic structure with given fiber geometry and property in FRC, instead of the matrix material, governs the impact response. The matrix material failure could be either brittle or ductile with a trivial effect on the impact response.