A REVIEW OF SOFT BODY IMPACT ON COMPOSITE STRUCTURE

Recent progress in material modeling and numerical analysis related to soft body impact on fiber reinforced composite structure is presented. Material modeling of the composite includes continuum damage mechanics for intra-ply progressive failure and cohesive zone models for interface fracture. Soft body projectiles exhibit significant deformation on impact and flow over the structure spreading the load. A numerical model of the soft body that has been correlated to the test data is the smooth particle hydrodynamics method in conjunction with an equation of state. The composite material model and the soft body projectile model are implemented in explicit finite element software packages, which also contain contact algorithms and non-linear transient analysis capabilities.