Approaches to simulate impact damages on aeronautical composite structures

Impact damage is one of the most critical aggressions for composite structures in aeronautical applications. Consequences of a high/low velocity and high/low energy impacts are very important to investigate. It is usually admitted that the most critical configuration is the Barely Visible Impact Damage (BVID), with impact energy of about 25 J, where some internal damages, invisible on the impacted surface of the specimen, drastically reduce the residual properties of the impacted material. In this work we highlight by the finite element simulation, the damage initiation and propagation process and the size of the defaults created by low velocity impact. Two approaches were developed: the first one is the layup technic and the second one is based on the cohesive element technic. Both technics show the plies damages by the Hashin’s criteria. Moreover the second one gives the delamination damages with regards to the Benzeggah-Kenane criteria. The validation of these models is done by confrontation with some experimental results.