Finite element simulation of 0°/90° CFRP laminated plates subjected to crushing using a free-face-crushing concept

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a numerical model of (0°/90°) CFRP plates subjected to low velocity crushing, based on physical observations. The developed model is represented at the meso-scale and is based on five main ideas: 1 – meshing of each ply of the laminate; 2 – use of cohesive elements to represent delamination and plies splaying; 3 – simulation of macro-scale fragments; 4 – representation of the localized crushing of plies at their extremities with the introduction of a free-face-crushing concept; 5 – representation of contacts between plies, plies and impacted base, plies and debris. The results of the Abaqus/Explicit simulations show a good agreement with the experimental results, which demonstrates that the proposed methodology is able to predict the force, the main failure mechanisms and the phenomenology observed during experiments. Furthermore, an analysis of the repartition of absorbed energies is done, which shows that the most efficient mechanism is the localized crushing in the 0° plies.