Energy absorption capability of carbon/epoxy composite laminates: A novel numerical approach

While composite structures absorb energy well during crash events, crush-induced failure mechanisms and their effects on energy absorption characteristics are still unclear. Due to the complexity of the process, Finite Element (FE) models applied to estimate energy absorption capability of composite structures require a considerable amount of computational time. This study presents a novel numerical approach for the crushing process of AS4/8852 flat coupon plates in which computational cost is decreased by reducing the number of interfaces between plies and modifying the relevant properties. Experimental and numerical studies are conducted for cross-ply specimens [0/90](ns) in order to understand and discuss the failure mechanisms occurring during the crushing process in detail and the influence of plate thickness on Specific Energy Absorption (SEA). Moreover, to demonstrate the validity of novel FE model for different stacking sequences, same approach is applied to the [0/45/0/-45](s) plate geometry. By this method, run time is decreased by more than 50%.

Automated summary

While it is known that composite structures have good energy absorption capabilities during crash events, the specific failure mechanisms and their effects on energy absorption characteristics are still not well understood. This study presents a novel numerical approach to reduce computational cost in estimating the energy absorption capability of AS4/8852 flat coupon plates during the crushing process by reducing the number of interfaces between plies and modifying relevant properties. Experimental and numerical studies were conducted to understand the failure mechanisms and the influence of plate thickness on Specific Energy Absorption (SEA) during the crushing process. The runtime was reduced by more than 50% using this method.