Low-velocity impact analysis and multi-objective optimization of hybrid carbon/basalt fibre reinforced composite laminate

Three-dimensional in-plane progressive damage model was developed for carbon/basalt fibre interlayer hybrid composites in this study, and cohesive element model was employed to simulate interlaminar damage. Numerical simulation of low-velocity progressive impact damage of hybrid composite laminate was carried out, and its accuracy was verified by physical impact test, with the maximum error of the maximum contact force, maximum displacement and energy absorption not exceeding 6.1% and the maximum error in damage area size within 4.8%. The effects of lay-up structure and angle on the impact properties of hybrid laminate were investigated through simulation. Finally, real number coding strategy was proposed for the parametric representation of the lay-up material and angle of each layer. Multi-objective optimization of hybrid laminate based on Kriging surrogate model and hybrid algorithm composed of elitist non-dominated sorting genetic (NSGA2) algorithm and multi-objective particle swarm (MPSO) algorithm was conducted. The optimal trade-off solution was selected from the Pareto solutions using technique for ordering preferences by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) coupled with principal component analysis (PCA) methods. The coefficient of variance between peak force and maximum displacement of the optimized laminate was 49.3%, 44.9% and 31.4% lower than those of the pure CFRP laminate, pure BFRP laminate, and hybrid laminate before optimization, respectively, indicating that the balance degree of impact displacement and force has been substantially improved. The progressive impact damage simulation and parametric optimization design methodology proposed in this study provide useful guidance for the design of hybrid composite laminate.