Note on the impact behaviour of fibre-metal laminates

•Deformation and denting of fibre-metal laminates subjected to low-velocity mass impacts.•Modification of available rigid plastic theoretical solutions to predict the behaviour of fibre-metal laminates.•Comparisons of theory with experimental results on circular, square and rectangular fibre-metal laminates.•Blast loading of square fibre-metal laminates.•Proposed method could be used for fibre-metal laminates having a variety of shapes with a wide range of boundary conditions and subjected to impact, blast and dynamic loadings.

Theoretical predictions are developed for the deformation and denting of fibre-metal laminates when subjected to low-velocity impact loads, or uniform blast loadings, and compared with available experimental test results. The rigid plastic material approximation with modifications to reflect the actual cross-section of a fibre-metal laminate is used to produce simple formulae. Generally speaking, these expressions produce theoretical predictions which give reasonable agreement with the corresponding experimental data. These formulae would be useful for preliminary design calculations and rapid calculations for forensic purposes. A wide range of rigid plastic theoretical solutions for plates having different shapes, boundary conditions and impact, dynamic and blast loadings have been studied in the literature and these equations could be used for fibre-metal laminates with the appropriate modifications discussed in this paper.