A numerical study of ply orientation on ballistic impact resistance of multi-ply fabric panels

This paper presents a detailed finite element (FE) analysis aiming to investigate numerically the impact deformation of multi-ply fabric panels with angled plies. The purpose of the investigation described in this paper is to study numerically the way in which the multi-ply panels deform and to identify the energy absorption in different panel constructions. The FE model was created using ABAQUS to simulate the transverse impact of a projectile onto various woven fabric panels. Influencing factors such as the impact velocity, panel construction and the number of plies are taken into account in the FE simulations. The numerical predictions show that the orientation of plies significantly affects the energy-absorbing capacity of the multi-ply fabric panels. The angled panels always increase the energy-absorbing capacity, compared with the aligned panel, by as much as 20%, depending on the number of plies in the panel. In addition, the stacking sequence of oriented plies also plays an important role in absorbing the energy. For the multi-ply fabric panel with large numbers of plies, there is an optimised sequence of plies which can maximise the energy-absorbing capacity of the panel. An important aspect of the work is validation of the numerical technique. It is shown that the FE predictions are highly consistent with the experimental study [1].