%0 Journal Article
%T An experimental and numerical investigation on the low velocity impact response of thermoplastic hybrid composites
%A Aswani Kumar Bandaru
%A Naresh Bhatnagar
%A Shivdayal Patel
%A Suhail Ahmad
%J Journal of Composite Materials
%@ 1530-793X
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/0021998317714043
%X This paper presented an experimental and numerical investigation on the low velocity impact response of thermoplastic hybrid composites reinforced with Kevlar/basalt fabrics. Two hybrid and one Kevlar homogeneous composite laminates were manufactured with polypropylene as a resin. In the hybrid composites, one hybrid composite (H-1) was manufactured with alternate stacking of four layers of basalt and four layers of Kevlar and the second hybrid composite (H-2) was manufactured with four Kevlar layers on front face and four basalt layers on back face. Low velocity impact tests were performed using a drop-weight impact equipment at three different energies (25£¿J, 50£¿J and 75£¿J). Among the two hybrid composites H-1 hybrid composite exhibited 15.58¨C20.79% and 13.47¨C20.47% improvement in the peak force and energy absorption, respectively, than the H-2 hybrid composite. The peak force and energy absorption of Kevlar homogeneous composite was also improved by 10.07¨C14.37% and 5.38¨C11.29%, respectively, due to hybridization. A three dimensional (3D) dynamic finite element software, Abaqus/Explicit, was implemented to simulate the experimental results of low velocity impact tests. A user-defined material subroutine (VUMAT) based on Chang-Chang linear-orthotropic damage model was implemented into the finite element code. The predictions from numerical simulation were found to be in good agreement with the experimental results
%K Kevlar
%K basalt
%K low velocity impact
%K hybrid composites
%K polypropylene
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0021998317714043