Study of post-impact behaviour of thin hybrid carbon/epoxy and glass/epoxy woven composite laminates under fatigue tensile loading - Part II: Numerical study

This article concerns the modelling of post-impact damage propagation in thin carbon/epoxy and glass/epoxy hybrid woven composite laminates loaded in fatigue tension. The modelling is based on the semi-continuous approach implemented into the explicit finite element code RADIOSS. The bundles are modelled with rod elements and the resin is modeled with a specific damageable shell element, used to stabilize the bundles. This approach is extended to post-impact fatigue tensile loadings. Resin damaging is implemented for the shell elements through two fatigue laws Y-xy - N-resin a and Y-xy - N-resin b based on thermodynamical forces and identified through the experimental results obtained in Part I. Fiber breakage is introduced for rod elements through Basquin curves based on tensile and compressive strains. The damage accumulation is taken into account by a Miner's rule. For several impact energies and amplitude of fatigue loading, the modelling well correlates the experimental results in terms of damage propagation scenario, path and speed.