Elastoplastic contact/impact of rigidly supported composites

A general elastoplastic contact/impact model of a spherical object and a supported transversely isotropic composite layer or a half-space is presented. The main feature of the model is a contact law that is developed based on elastic–plastic and fully plastic indentation theory. For an impact event, the model parameters can easily be obtained analytically, computationally using finite elements (FE), and from experiments. The model results are compared to those from a nonlinear FE model developed in ABAQUS, and with limited experimental data showing excellent agreement. The model has also been tested for low-velocity impact, which compared very well with the FE results using ABAQUS/Explicit. The model is simple, yet it successfully captures a fairly complicated contact behavior.