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Impact Analysis of Aluminum-Fiber Composite Lamina

by Yehia Abdel-Nasser**, Ninshu Ma***, Hidekazu Murakawa*** and Islam El-Malah**

Hybrid materials of fiber composite and aluminum alloys have a great potential in reducing the weight of transportation vehicles. It has
been become an alternative solution to steel panels because they can provide high strength and improving energy absorbing capability under
impact and collision loading. Developing a new composite material based on experiment by changing mechanical properties is quite
expensive and takes long time. Therefore, numerical simulation with the aide of FEM is often performed, which has provided close results
compared with the experimental ones. There are many different ways in which the fiber can be combined into the resin. In this paper, the
effect of lining arrangements of composite materials and the orientations of the layers on the strength was simulated using FEM in which the
adhesive bond between fiber composite/metal is assumed as a tie constraint. Several plate panels with different lining arrangements and
subjected to impact loads were investigated. The results of analyses are presented and their trends are discussed.

Key Words: FEM, Hybrid Plate Panels, Lining Arrangements, Impact Analysis, Penetrations

1. Introduction
A composite material is fabricated by combining two or more
distinct materials together but remaining uniquely identifiable in
the mixture. The most common example is, a fiberglass
composite material, in which glass fibers are mixed with a
polymeric resin1). Composite materials are becoming increasingly
more attractive in a variety of structural engineering applications,
such as airplane fuselages, turbine blades, patrol boats and car
bodies. The challenge at hand is to use a composite material
that is optimized to provide the same or better strength and
stiffness as that of traditional isotropic materials. The amount of
fracture load breaks a piece of fiber glass, depends on the size of
the piece of fiberglass, its thickness, width, length, and also the
loading direction 2). It also depends on what the fiberglass is
made of such as layers orientations of fibers and amount of
polymeric resins. The goal of this paper is to analyse the
strength of hull structures made of composite materials as an
alternative solution to replace the heavy steel structure.
anticipated that the use of the composites will save on overall
weight in order to maximize potential payload capacity. The
optimal composite design is expected to be both lighter than the
steel configuration, and exhibited resistance to more severe
loading conditions such as impact loadings3). It is possible to
design a composite material such that it has the attributes desired
for a specific application. For example, fiber-Metal Laminates
(FMLs) are a hybrid of metal and composite laminates that are
increasingly being used in aerospace applications4). This is
consisting of alternating layers of thin metallic sheets and
fiber-reinforced epoxy. Two main types of FML are aramid
fiber-reinforced epoxy /aluminum laminates (ARALL) and S2
glass fiber-reinforced epoxy/aluminum laminates (GLARE).
The combination of mechanical properties of monolithic metal
and fiber-reinforced composite provides FMLs with mechanical
advantages such as low density, high strength, and high damage
tolerance. Impact damage is a key concern for the safety of
transportation vehicles5). Therefore it is necessary to accurately
predict internal impact damage to FMLs and other composite
materials6). Therefore, the goal of this project is to rearrange
lay-up of aluminum-fiber composite lamina through changing
mechanical properties and lining arrangements of the layers, and
comparing results of the arrangements to obtain higher
performance of the plate lamina against impact and blast loadings.
These changes can be virtually done by numerical simulation
It is using FEM software such as ABAQUS7). However, the
numerical results required to be verified through laboratory
experiments.
2. Failure criteria
The failure of a composite panel will be resulted from either a
critical strain or stress exceeded in the matrix or fiber. The
composite behaves elastically almost to the point of failure,
primarily because the glass fibers and the polymeric resin were

*
both linear elastic solids with a brittle fracture mode, i.e., no
Received: 2014.11.28
**
Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University
***
Member, Joining and Welding Research Institute, Osaka
University
 33 2015 2 167s
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plastic deformation. We would also note from the mechanical
tests that the elastic modulus of the composite also varied with
the amount of fiber added to the resin. Hashins failure criteria8)
for Unidirectional Fiber Composites will be considered in this
work. These are interacting failure criteria where more than one
stress components have been used to evaluate the different failure
Different configurations of lining arrangement are investigated.
The absorbed energy and contact force for each arrangement of
the plate panel are calculated after damage. The following
assumptions are considered in the models:
Volumetric ratio of composite (fiber/resin) is 50%.

modes. Usually Hashin criteria are implemented within two
dimensional classical lamination approach for stress calculations
with ply discounting as the material degradation model. After that,
he extended the criteria to three dimensional problems where the
maximum stress criteria are used for transverse normal stress
component.
The plies are symmetric laminated composites.
Unidirectional fiber or Random fiber is assumed.
Adhesive bond between Fiber/Metal is assumed as a tie
constraint.
1- 4. Validation of the FE models

3. Description of FEM models

The paper addresses the numerical simulation of impacts on
plate panels by applying FEM. The plate panels are composed
from hybrid material (S2 glass fiber-reinforced epoxy/ aluminum
laminates). The research work is aimed to optimize the
arrangement of composite layers which sustained the maximum
impact load. Other loads such as in-plane loads are not considered
here. The FE simulation of the impact analysis encompasses a
number of individual problems such as mesh size, element type
and time increments, which should be given appropriate attention
during the analysis. In the analysis, a fine mesh is generated
especially at the contact areas (mesh size=3x3x0.5mm) to acquire
accurate results and to represent real failure modes during impact.
Whereas coarse mesh may apply for areas located far from
collision region to reduce CPU time. Also appropriate element
type (8 node break element) is selected to achieve accurately FE
analysis and increases the reliability of numerical models. The
adhesive bond between the glass/epoxy plies and aluminum
layers was modeled using the tie constraint module in Abaqus
Wu10) conducted a series of low velocity impact tests to
evaluate the deformation and damage responses of FMLs. A
comparative study is conducted using the experimental impact
results of Wu to validate our numerical model results. The
model consists of two layers of Al 2024-T3 Aluminum alloy
sheets and one layer of [0/90/90/0] S2 glass/epoxy composite.
Here, Al is referred to the material of aluminum and /0/90/90/0/ is
referred to 4plys of the composite material as shown in Fig.1. A
steel spherical impactor of 12.3 mm diameter and with a mass of
6.29 kg is impacted the plate panel with different impact energies
such as 12.7J, 16.3J and 24.3J respectively. The hybrid plate
panel (Aluminum-Fiber composite) of (0.076x0.076m) with total
plate thickness equal 1.56mm is analyzed using FEM. The plate
panel is clamped at all edges. The mechanical properties of S2
glass/epoxy4) is as shown in Table 1. The properties of
Aluminum 2024-T3 is Isotropic elastic material and its
characteristics as follows: Youngs Modulus E= 73800 MPa and
Poissons ratio =0.33. Hashin failure criteria is applied to trace
the failure state of the composite material while the ductile failure
criterion is applied for the aluminum. The tie constrained law is
applied to express the adhesive bond between fiber composite and
aluminum7). The time of impact is taken about 6 x10-3s.

software to express the delaminating failure. Abaqus/Explicit can

Table 1 Mechanical properties of S2 glass/epoxy.
be applied to model nonlinear material behavior in a composite
Material Parameter values (GPa)
laminate. Other problem such as modeling of the material S2 E11 E22 E33 G12 G23 V12 V23
9)
damage criteria is explained in Refs. . glass/
55 9.5 9.5 5.5 3 0.33 0.33
epoxy
Abaqus/Explicit version is used to simulate the impact of plate
panels with a striking object such as ball or cylinder at different Parameter values (MPa)
velocity. The plate panels are modeled using solid elements LU,t LU,c TU,t TU,c LT u
(C3D8R). The impactor (ball or cylinder) is modeled using 2430 2000 50 160 50
rigid elements (R3D4). This assumption is chosen because we
are interested in comparing the effect of the impact on the The mesh model of the plate panel and the impactor is shown
different plate panels with no reference to the impactor. in Fig.2. The impactor is moving with a constant velocity
 168s YEHIA et al.: Impact Analysis of Aluminum-Fiber Composite Lamina
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towards the plate panel. The numerical results show that the
maximum deformation is observed at the center of the plate panel.
Figure 3 shows relationships between contact force and time for
different levels of energy. At low energy such as 12.7J energy,
the numerical results have the same value of the contact force
when compared with the experimental results. However, for 16.3j
and 22.3j energy, at the elastic state same results are attained but
the deviations is observed after damage. Here, the numerical
results show higher contact forces than those attained by the
experimental ones. This is because the debonding of the
Aluminum layers and the composite layer was constrained using
the tied constraint. During the impact analysis of the plate panel,
failure modes such as plastic deformation of the metal layers
(Aluminum) and matrix cracking and fiber failure of the
composite layer are observed. Figure 4 shows relationship
between deflection at the center of the plate panel and the time.
The central deflection is reached to about 4.5mm and it is
increased as the impact energy increases. The effect of fiber
11)
dimensions and orientations are not considered in this study .
Fiber layers
Fig. 1 The hybrid plate panel.
Fig. 3 Relationships between the impact force and time.
5. The impact behavior
In this section, the hybrid plate panel of 0.5x0.5m is modeled
with solid elements. The cylinder is modeled with 3D rigid
elements. The cylinder is moving towards the center of palate
panel with a high energy of about 2000J. The dynamic explicit
solver was used to account for the time-dependent loading and
the complex interaction between the cylinder and the composite
plate panel. The model with different arrangements of fiber
glass and Aluminum laminated layers are investigated to
determine the best arrangement that able to prevent cylinder
penetration and absorb the high energy (2000J). These model
arrangements are suggested as follows, (See Fig.5)
3GL (3 layers of Aluminum each layer has 4 mm thick and 2
layers of fiber glass/epoxy each layer has 3mm thick).
4GL (4 layers of Aluminum each layer has 3 mm thick and 3
layers of fiber glass/epoxy each layer has 2mm thick).
5GL (5 layers of Aluminum each layer has 2 mm thick and 4
layers of fiber glass/epoxy each layer has 2mm thick).
Each layer of the composite material is consisted of 4 plies
Rigid ball
Fig. 2 Mesh model of the hybrid plate panel.
Fig. 4 Relationships between the deflection and time.
 33 2015 2 169s
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penetrates the plate panel at time 6.1x10-5 second and gradually

its kinetic energy is dissipated with final zero velocity. For 5GL
3GL 4GL model, the cylinder could not penetrate the plate panel. It
approaches zero velocity and totally lost its ballistic energy. It is

5GL
noticed with increasing number of (Al) layers as in cases 4GL and
Al Fiber
5GL arrangements; the velocity of the cylinder is drastically
Fig. 5 Different arrangements of hybrid plate panels.
decelerated. Table 3 shows a comparative analysis for the

with equal ply thickness and unidirectional of the stack sequences previous arrangement using the specified material properties.

(0/90/0/90). The local co-ordinate systems were defined to In this analysis, the weight parameter defined by the weight per

account for orientations of individual plies and to model the area WP (kg/m2) of the plate panel is a little bit high. The weight

laminate and material behavior precisely. The material property parameter WP (kg/m2) may be reduced by utilizing higher

of the composite is given before in Table 1. While properties for strength of composite materials to get less plate thickness13). It

Aluminum is taken from Ref12). The cylinder of mass 8g and can be safely assumed that at high loading rates, as normally

length 39 mm impacts the center of the plate panel in the axial observed in ballistics impact, the metal layers and glass fabric

direction with a constant velocity of 700m/s as shown in Table undergoes considerable hardening, before failure thus providing

213). Here, due to the high energy, the time of impact is taken extended resistance.

about 12x10-5 second.

Table 3 Characteristics of plate panel arrangements during
analysis.
Table 2 Characteristics properties of the cylinder 13). Model Plate Thick
Time of
Weight Failure of
End
penetration Velocity
Weight Velocity Energy Arrangement (mm) (kg /m2) layers
(s) (m/s)
Designation
g m/s J
3GL 18 5.2x10-5 44.4 All 138
7.62x39mm 8 700 2000 -5
4GL 18 6.1x10 44.4 Not All 0
5GL 18 Not 43 Not All 0
The developed FE model is shown in Fig. 6. Fine mesh is
Rigid Cylinder
generated at the center of the plate panel.
Figure 7 shows the penetration of the cylinder into the plate
panel. It is noticed that for 3GL and 4GL arrangements, after
the plastic deformation spreads at the center of the face layer (Al)
of the plate, fracture failure starts at the layer (Al) then the
cylinder penetrates (Al) layer and reaches the composite layers
causing brittle damages in its plys and finally, the cylinder
penetrates the second layer (Al) of the plate panel after causing Fig. 6 Mesh model of the plate panel before and after penetration.

large deformation in this layer (Al). This process is repeated for

remaining layers of the plate panel. Figure 8 shows the ductile
fracture of aluminum layers and brittle fracture of the composite
layers. Figure 9 shows relationships between moving velocity
of the cylinder and time. At the beginning, the cylinder is
moving with a velocity of 700m/s, then its velocity gradually
decreases. For 3GL model, the cylinder penetrates the plate
panel at time of 5.2x10-5 second and it still has a kinetic energy
with a velocity of about 138m/s. At the end a complete
Penetration
penetration is occurred. Regarding 4GL model, the cylinder Fig. 7 Penetration of the cylinder into plate panel arrangements.
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6. Conclusions 5) R. Kalavalapally, R. Penmetsa and R. Grandhi : Multidisciplinary

The paper refers to the simulation impact
aluminum-fiber composite plate lamina using FEM which
provided close results compared with the experimental ones.
It is found that by increasing number of (Al) layers in the
lay-up arrangement of the hybrid plate lamina will
drastically decelerate the velocity of the impacted cylinder
and absorb higher impact energy (2000J). However, higher
weight parameter WP (43kg/m2) of the hybrid plate lamina is
attained. This may be reduced by utilizing higher strength
composite materials to get less plate thickness and weight.
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