Projectile Impact on a Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plate

Composite materials offer significant design advantages in the aerospace industry. High strength and light weight are the two most attractive features for aircraft and space vehicle designs. However, their complex material behav-ior makes analysis of these structures a significant chal-lenge, particularly in a high speed impact event. The ad-vanced composite modeling and industry leading simula-tion capabilities of Abaqus/Explicit make analysis of these challenging materials straightforward and allow accurate prediction of ballistic limit, damage and failure. This tech-nology brief describes an analysis of the dynamic impact of a steel projectile onto a unidirectional carbon fibre rein-forced plate and the specific advantages of Abaqus/Explicit for this type of simulation.