Hypervelocity impact response of CFRP laminates using smoothed particle hydrodynamics method: Implementation and validation

The current work investigates the hypervelocity impact response (HVI) of carbon fiber reinforced polymer composites (CFRP) and the produced secondary debris using smoothed-particle hydrodynamics methodology (SPH) in LS-DYNA. The aim of present study is to reproduce numerically the CFRP material response to hypervelocity impact and fragments cloud, to investigate the applicability of SPH modeling technique on composite materials and to determine the suitable numerical solution parameters. A verification procedure for modeling of composite laminate using SPH methodology is proposed. The investigation starts with baseline quasi-static tests, and the results are compared against the available theoretical ones to ensure the stability and efficiency of the SPH kernel function under quasi-static loading. Afterwards, the developed methodology is applied to hypervelocity impact response of CFRPs and the ballistic limit, the crater diameter as well as the secondary debris cloud are numerically calculated and correlated to the published HVI experimental results on CFRP plates.