Progressive failure analysis and energy-absorbing experiment of composite tubes under axial dynamic impact

The crashworthiness testing of carbon/epoxy composite tubes is conducted in this study, and the corresponding energy-absorbing parameters and failure morphology are discussed. Considering the anisotropic constitutive relationships of composites, a stiffness degraded model that involves the extended Hashin failure criterion and damage evolution law based on the continuum damage mechanics is proposed to analyze the progressive failure of G803/5224 composite tubes. The progressive failure user subroutine is developed based on the transient dynamics software. The progressive failure numerical analysis combined with the failure criterion is also discussed. The relative error of specific energy absorption and average load is less than 6% compared that of the experimental results. This result indicates that the proposed method can be applied to estimate the energy-absorbing characteristics of composite tubes.