Evaluation of impact assessment methodologies. Part I: Applied methods

The present paper is the first part of a comparative evaluation of two methodologies for the analysis of damage in composites. The subject of the investigation is low-velocity impact and residual compression strength of monolithic composite panels. One of the methodologies is implemented in the tool CODAC, which is a stand-alone software that aims to be a fast tool and works with specialized finite element (FE) and material models. The other methodology IDAT parametrically generates the FE models by using MSC.Patran and performs the analysis by the FE code ABAQUS/Standard. The evaluation in regard to accuracy and efficiency is performed by comparing and judging the models and techniques, which are applied for stress analysis, failure detection, material degradation and time integration. Part I of the paper describes the applied methodologies. In Part II, the methodologies are validated by comparing computational results against experimental results.