Static crush experiments and simulations of laminated composite plates and shells with constrained layered damping

Plate and shell specimens were formed from carbon–epoxy prepregs. Then, attaching 3 M damping foil SJ-2552 to specimens formed constrained layered damped (CLD) components with sandwich-like structures. A steel indentor was used to compress the plate and shell specimens until they completely collapsed. The crushing strength of the CLD components is examined experimentally, and the finite element software ABAQUS is used to simulate the experimental crushing behavior using the user-defined material (UMAT) subroutine. UMAT allows users to define the progressive stiffness modification and analyze the fracturing of composite components. The ultimate strengths of the CLD components are accurately estimated using the UMAT, and the failure observed in the experiments closely corresponds to that in the numerical simulations.