Large deformation dynamic finite element analysis of delaminated composite plates using contact–impact conditions

• The inter-laminar contact at the delaminated region in composite plates is modeled with the augmented Lagrangian approach.
• An energy and momentum conserving composite implicit time integration scheme proposed by Bathe and Baig is used.
• Proper selection of penalty parameter is found to be very important for dynamic response of composite delaminated plates.

A new C0 composite plate finite element based on Reddy’s third order theory is used for large deformation dynamic analysis of delaminated composite plates. The inter-laminar contact is modeled with an augmented Lagrangian approach. Numerical results show that the widely used “unconditionally stable” β-Newmark method presents instability problems in the transient simulation of delaminated composite plate structures with large deformation. To overcome this instability issue, an energy and momentum conserving composite implicit time integration scheme presented by Bathe and Baig is used. It is found that a proper selection of the penalty parameter is very crucial in the contact simulation.