Workshop on Challenges in Computational Mechanics, LMT Cachan, 10-12 May, 2006

Modelling Composite Aircraft Structures under Impact Loads:

A Challenge for Damage Mechanics
Alastair Johnson
German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Institute of Structures and Design, Stuttgart, Germany
e-mail: alastair.johnson@dlr.de
The paper summarises progress on composites failure modelling and numerical simulation of
impact damage on composite aircraft structures. To reduce certification and development
costs, reliable computational methods are urgently required by the aircraft industry able to
predict structural integrity of composite structures under high velocity impacts from hard
projectiles such as broken fan blades, steel runway debris, etc. and from deformable bodies
such as birds, hailstones and tyre rubber. The requirement for improved computational
methods for composite structures is now particularly acute in the aircraft industry due to
ongoing development programmes to introduce composite wings and fuselages in future
large transport aircraft such as the Boeing 787 and Airbus 350. Composites design methods
are well established for small strain elastic behaviour and classical laminate theory is
appropriate for designing these aircraft structures under normal service loads. They are not
however suitable under severe crash and impact load conditions which lead to extensive
structural failure. Key issues here are the development of suitable constitutive laws for
modelling composites in-ply and delamination failures, determination of composites
parameters from high rate materials tests, materials laws for soft body impactors, and the
efficient implementation of the materials models into FE codes. These problems involve both
multi-scale and multi-physics modelling techniques which are discussed in the paper. The
multi-scale aspects arise because impact damage is localised and requires fine scale
modelling of delamination and ply damage at the micromechanics level, whilst the structural
length scale is much larger. The multi-physics aspect arises in fluid-structure interactions
when soft bodies such as gelatine (substitute bird) or ice (hailstones) flow extensively on
impact with the structure and require fluid modelling techniques.
Polymer composites exhibit a range of failure modes: matrix cracking, transverse ply cracks,
fibre fracture, fibre pull-out, microbuckling, interply delamination etc, which are initiated at the
micro level and can be modelled by micromechanics techniques at length scales governed
by fibre diameters. The length scale for aircraft structural analysis is in metres, with shell
element size for crash or impact simulations in FE analyses measured in cms. The challenge
for computational mechanics is to develop appropriate materials models at the structural
macro level which embody the salient micromechanics failure behaviour, and are suitable for
implementation into robust commercial FE codes. Considerable progress has been made in
the last 10 years with meso-scale models based on continuum damage mechanics (CDM) as
the link in the FE code between composites micro- and macroscales. In particular Ladevze
and his co-workers [1], [2] have developed a CDM framework within which in-ply and
delamination failures may be modelled which has been implemented in a commercial code
used by the industry [3], [4]. The formulation of the damage evolution equations in the
Ladevze CDM models is physically based and allows generalisations to include features
such as irreversible damage and rate dependence. Improved computational methods have
also been developed to study impact damage in composite structures. The CDM ply damage
model is implemented in layered composite shell elements, in which delamination failure is
modelled by cohesive interfaces between stacked shell elements which may be debonded
when the interface fracture energy has been absorbed. Soft projectiles are modelled by a
smooth particle hydrodynamic (SPH) method, in which the FE mesh is replaced by
interacting discrete particles. Data from pressure pulses measured during gelatine and ice
1

Workshop on Challenges in Computational Mechanics, LMT Cachan, 10-12 May, 2006

impact on rigid plates are used to determine parameters for the material equation of state for
use with the SPH method.
The paper describes ongoing DLR work on impact damage predictions in composite
structures and FE code validations. Impact simulations are compared with test data from gas
gun tests of monolithic composite shell and sandwich structures subjected to impact from a
range of projectiles, which includes steel projectiles, tyre rubber, gelatine and ice at velocities
in the range 60 250 m/s. The impact conditions are relevant to civil aircraft structures
subjected to foreign object damage (FOD), bird strike, hailstone and tyre debris impact. Test
conditions and impact energies were chosen to give both delamination failures and fibre
damage. Results are presented, which demonstrate that it is possible to simulate impact
failure modes and damage progression during high velocity impact loading in composite
structures. Thus the codes may now be used with some confidence in concept and
development studies for composite aircraft structures. Problems being addressed in current
research include the introduction of rate dependent effects into the composites models, and
the use of discrete element methods for modelling fragmentation damage in composites. The
paper will discuss the challenge now which is to improve the reliability, computational
efficiency and robustness of the codes for use in aircraft certification. Improved
computational methods required for future certification studies include multiscale FE
modelling for studying damaged regions in large structures, and stochastic methods for
defining failure envelopes in structures under a range of crash and impact conditions, which
could significantly reduce certification test programmes.
[1] Ladevze P, Le Dantec E. Damage modelling of the elementary ply for laminated
composites. Composites Science and Technology, 43; 257-267, 1992
[2] Allix O, Ladevze P. Interlaminar interface modelling for the prediction of delamination.
Composites Structures, 22, 235-242, 1992.
[3] Johnson AF, Pickett AK, Rozycki P. Computational methods for predicting impact
damage in composite structures. Composites Science and Technology; 61, 2183
2192, 2001.
[4] PAM-SHOCK / PAM-CRASH FE Code. Engineering Systems International, F94578 Rungis Cedex, France.