Investigation on low velocity impact behavior of sandwich composite and monolithic laminate plates using FEM analysis

Because the fiber composite approach can provide significant improvement in specific strength and stiffness over conventional metal alloys, the consuming demand is getting more increase. Moreover, the composite material structures are more effective in economic point of view due to great reduction of number of parts and manufacturing processes relatively to the conventional metal structure. However the composite structures has an disadvantage for instance, very weak for impact damage due to foreign object damage such as, sand, rock, birds, tool, etc. Especially the damage due to low velocity impact rather than that by high velocity impact cannot be visually found. Such the low velocity damage can be divided into some types such as matrix cracking, fiber fracture, delamination, etc. In this study low velocity impact behaviors of monolithic laminate plate were investigated and sandwich composite plate compared using a commercial FEM Code.