An experimental and numerical investigation on the low velocity impact response of thermoplastic hybrid composites

This paper presented an experimental and numerical investigation on the low velocity impact response of thermoplastic hybrid composites reinforced with Kevlar/basalt fabrics. Two hybrid and one Kevlar homogeneous composite laminates were manufactured with polypropylene as a resin. In the hybrid composites, one hybrid composite (H-1) was manufactured with alternate stacking of four layers of basalt and four layers of Kevlar and the second hybrid composite (H-2) was manufactured with four Kevlar layers on front face and four basalt layers on back face. Low velocity impact tests were performed using a drop-weight impact equipment at three different energies (25 J, 50 J and 75 J). Among the two hybrid composites H-1 hybrid composite exhibited 15.58–20.79% and 13.47–20.47% improvement in the peak force and energy absorption, respectively, than the H-2 hybrid composite. The peak force and energy absorption of Kevlar homogeneous composite was also improved by 10.07–14.37% and 5.38–11.29%, respectively, due to hybridization. A three dimensional (3D) dynamic finite element software, Abaqus/Explicit, was implemented to simulate the experimental results of low velocity impact tests. A user-defined material subroutine (VUMAT) based on Chang-Chang linear-orthotropic damage model was implemented into the finite element code. The predictions from numerical simulation were found to be in good agreement with the experimental results.