Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Low-Velocity Impact of Carbon Fibre-Based Non-Crimp Fabric Reinforced Thermoplastic Composites

There has been a lot of interest in understanding the low-velocity impact (LVI) response of thermoplastic composites. However, little research has focussed on studying the impact behaviour of non-crimp fabric (NCF)-based fibre reinforced thermoplastic composites. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the LVI responses of two types of non-crimp fabric (NCF) carbon fibre reinforced thermoplastic laminated composites that have been considered attractive in the automotive and aerospace industry: (i) T700/polyamide 6.6 (PA6.6) and (ii) T700/polyphenylene sulphide (PPS). Each carbon/thermoplastic type was impacted at three different energy levels (40, 100 and 160 J), which were determined to achieve three degrees of penetrability, i.e., no penetration, partial penetration and full penetration, respectively. Two distinct non-destructive evaluation (NDE) techniques ((i) ultrasonic C-scanning and (ii) X-ray tomography) were used to assess the extent of damage after impact. The laminated composite plates were subjected to an out-of-plane, localised impact using an INSTRON(®) drop-weight tower with a hemispherical impactor measuring 16 mm in diameter. The time histories of force, deflection and velocity are reported and discussed. A nonlinear finite element model of the LVI phenomenon was developed using a finite element (FE) solver LS-DYNA(®) and validated against the experimental observations. The extent of damage observed and level of impact energy absorption calculated on both the experiment and FE analysis are compared and discussed.