Impact Characteristics and Damage Detection of Woven Carbon/Epoxy Laminates for Car Body Structures of a Tilting Train

Recently, the use of composite material to railway vehicles is gradually increasing due to its light weight. The concept of light weight design will be very helpful for the tilting train to travel around a curve at a faster speed because the light weight car body makes the center of gravity lower. The impact characteristics of composite materials should be investigated because the impact property of composites is very important for the design and repair of a tilting train. This paper investigates the low-velocity impact and damage characteristics conducted on woven carbon/epoxy laminates for a tilting train. Low-velocity impact tests were carried out at different energy levels on woven type of laminates using a drop-weight apparatus. The impact-induced delaminations are examined by ultrasonic technique such as C-Scan. Those delaminations are also examined by laser technique such as ESPI (Electronic Speckle Pattern Interferometry). Experimental results show that the type of damage is dependent on the impact energy level and the delamination area becomes larger as the impact energy increases.