Impact behaviour of typical marine composite laminates

The impact response of five marine laminates has been investigated experimentally and described in terms of undelaminated, delaminated and fibre damage responses. The exact behaviour depended on the thickness to diameter ratio, but at incident energies up to fibre damage the impact responses were very similar for all lay-ups. Fibre damage was most severe for CSM and CSM/WR laminates. The WR and Kevlar/WR laminates were most resilient to fibre damage, but the Kevlar/WR did not perform better than the WR laminate. Energy absorption mechanisms other than damage were thought to be dominant until fibre damage occurs. Inertial interaction effects were more significant than expected.