Drop test analysis of composite structures

What is it about?

Recent studies on the drop test analysis of composite structures mainly focus on the unidirectional or quasi-isotropic composite plates. Impact studies on the three-dimensional curved structures with woven fabric composite materials have received much less attention in the literature. This paper presents detailed experimental and computational investigations of the impact behavior of woven fabric Eglass E722-8HS composite curved beam. Experimental drop tests of the curved beam are performed from the drop test tower to obtain the impact forces and deformation at various locations of the beam. Quantitatively experimental observation reveals a discrepancy in the time-dependent reaction forces obtained between two legs of the beam and in the strains measured at correspondingly symmetric positions. To correctly rationalize the mechanical behavior as observed in the experiment, an effective drop test modeling strategy is proposed and implemented by Python script allowing the nonlinear time-dependent response of each leg of the beam to be effectively computed. The predicted results by the drop test model are compared to the experimental data and reasonably good correlations between experimental and numerical results are achieved.

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Why is it important?

Correctly analyze impact responses of large-scale composite structures