High Velocity Impact Resistance Of Carbon Fiber-reinforced Metal Laminates

Carbon fiber-reinforced metal laminate(FMLs)is currently the growing trend in lightweight protective structure design in the military and aerospace fields.A new type of carbon-fiber-reinforced aluminum alloy laminates(CRALL)was designed in this study for high speed impact protection of intercontinental missiles and spacecrafts.Through the ballistic tests and numerical simulations,the failure mechanism and impact resistance of this CRALL targets under high velocity projectile impact were revealed.Firstly,the mechanical properties in 0 ° and 90 ° direction of the unidirectional carbon fiber(CFRP)were obtained through the material test.The tensile energy to break of the CFRP,Al2024-T3 aluminum alloy and carbon fiber reinforced aluminum laminate(CRALL)were compared.Then in the high-velocity impact test,the plate deformation,failure modes and ballistic protective properties of CFRP,Al2024-T3 and CRALL targets were investigated under flat nose,hemispherical nose and sharp nose projectiles impacting.Results showed that,CRALL targets the strongest impact resistance for flat nose projectile impact than hemispherical nose and sharp nose projectiles.At similar thickness,the ballistic protection performance and energy absorption capability of CRALL2/1 and CRALL3/2 targets were higher than CFRP targets.Finally,a VUMAT was written by FORTRAN language to calculate the impact failure of carbon fiber composites using the 3D solid elements in Abaqus.Numerical simulation results in this paper were consistent with the experimental results and effectively demonstrated failure process of CFRP and CRALL targets under impacting.The penetrating velocity curve and the ballistic limit obtained from the simulations were agreement with the experimental results,which verified the validity of the finite element model and user subroutine.Results of this study show that,CRALL targets have significant advantages in mechanical performance,layers damage,ballistic limit and the impact energy absorption capability than carbon fiber composite materials(CFRP).This study provides the theoretical basis and reference value for the optimal design of lightweight protective structure under high-speed impact,has the important value in engineering application.