Hybridization effects on ballistic impact behavior of carbon/ aramid fiber reinforced hybrid composite

Fiber reinforced polymer and its hybrid composites are widely used in bulletproof production. The ballistic limit, failure mode and energy absorption of a hybrid fiber reinforced polymer target (HFRPT) composed of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) and aramid fiber composite (AF) were studied in this paper. A finite element model was formulated to investigate the hybridization effect of layer thickness and stacking sequence on the ballistic behavior. A theoretical method was proposed to predict the ballistic limits of HFRPT, demonstrating an error percentage of less than 10% in most of the hybridization. Four typical failure modes including compression failure, tensile failure, shear plugging failure and tension shear coupling failure were observed in HFRPT, and the influence of hybridization on the alternations of failure modes was observed. Additionally, the effect of stacking sequences and layer thickness on energy absorption of HFRPT was examined. For the HFRPTs with a total thickness of 10 mm, the AF/CFRP hybridization proves to offer better ballistic impact resistance performance than the CFRP/AF hybridization. The HFRPT with a stacking sequence of 9 mm AF and 1 mm CFRP achieves a maximum ballistic limit of 420 m/s and the highest impact energy areal density ratio of 323 J/(g/cm2).