Cryogenic Composite Tank Progressive Damage And Failure Analysis

The launch vehicle cryogenic propellant tank is the core of the rocket engine system and engine power source. To achieve the requirements of the aircraft minimum take-off weight, composite materials are used in the aerospace field more and more widely, especially carbon fiber reinforced resin matrix composites. Meanwhile, the progressive damage and failure of composite materials have also been more and more attention. To accurately predict the composite damage trend and provide technical support, it is necessary to study the constitutive model, the stiffness degradation and failure modes for the carbon fiber reinforced resin matrix composite, and apply it to the numerical simulation.Reference to the Shahid analysis method; this article is based on the elasticity, the fracture mechanics and the classical laminated plate theory, and establishes the cryogenic composite constitutive relation that can describe the relationship of the damage and stiffness degradation considering the temperature stress. In this paper, the uniaxial tensile loading condition examples have been simulated, based on the Hashin failure criterion and the matrix tension, the fiber-matrix shearing and fiber tension failure criterions have been proposed, and the composite stiffness degradation has been studied in the Chang stiffness degradation way.Using software package ABAQUS UMAT subroutine, the above theory have been written to the subroutines by FORTRAN, and have finished the finite element simulation of the progressive damage and failure for the cryogenic composite under the uniaxial tensile loading. The damage state and multiplication trend of the cryogenic composite material models have been predicted by simulating the progressive damage and failure of the composite laminates, the effect of the thickness and ply angle factors has been studied.As composites contain a strong anisotropy, there are very few experiments about the cryogenic composite. This paper have verified cryogenic composite progressive damage and failure simulation by the foreign experiment results, both are consistent, and further show that the proposed constitutive relations and failure criterions can be applied to the cryogenic condition. Also indirectly verify the accuracy of the above cryogenic composite progressive damage and failure modeling.