Evaluation of Residual Strength in Aircraft Composite Under Impact Damage

Composite materials have a higher specific strength and modulus than traditional metallic materials. Additionally, these materials offer new design flexibilities, corrosion and wear resistance, low thermal conductivity and increased fatigue life. These, however, are susceptible to impact damage due to their lack of through-thickness reinforcement and it causes large drops in the load-carrying capacity of a structure. Therefore, the impact damage behavior and subsequently load-carrying capacity of impacted composite materials deserve careful investigation. In this study, the residual strength and impact characteristics of plain-woven CFRP composites with impact damage are investigated under axial tensile test. Impact test was performed using drop weight impact tester. And residual strength behavior by impact was evaluated using the caprino model. Also we evaluated behavior of residual strength by change of mass and size of impactor. Examined change of residual strength by impact energy change through this research and consider impactor diameter in caprino model.