Paper Title
Numerical Analysis of Impact Induced Damage and Delamination in Fiber Reinforced Polymer Composites

Abstract
The study of laminated composite plates is very important in the field of aircraft, spacecraft, automobiles, protective armor and structural applications. In the designing of these structures, energy absorption capacity and ballistic limit are of most importance. Ballistic limit can be defined as the velocity that is required by a projectile to penetrate armor plate completely without any residual velocity. It is mainly determined by performing experiments. Most of the analytical model used for damage predictions are based on the energy absorption, considering the global plate deflection, fiber breakage, delamination, matrix cracking, bending of petals, hole enlargement and friction between the striker and sample. Majority of the damage mode are found to be by delamination, matrix cracking and fiber breakage. In this paper, the damage of composite laminates, subjected to low velocity impact, in the form of intra-laminar delamination was modelled using quadratic stress-based criteria for damage initiation, and fracture mechanics techniques to capture its evolution. The finite element method (FEM) was used inthe numerical simulation of the behavior of composites subjected to low velocity impact, using commercial FEA package ABAQUS/Explicit FE. The predicted numerical results were validated from experimental results available in the literature. These results will help improvement in design of impact resistant FRP composites and reduce the experimental effort associated with the design. Keywords - Finite Element Analysis (FEA), ABAQUS, Composites, Fiber Reinforced Polymers (FRP), Ballistic Limit, Delamination, Impact Analysis