Experimental Analysis of Low-Velocity Impact Behaviors of Carbon Fiber Composite Laminates

Manufacture processing of composite laminates often leads to unequal thickness of lamina and different impact responses. However, almost all existing works neglected this problem because they considered equal thickness for each lamina. This paper aims to study the influence of unequal thickness of each lamina on the impact behaviors of composite laminates by experiments. Effects of the layup patterns and impact energy are mainly studied. Results in terms of the impact experiments of carbon fiber composite laminates show that subtle difference for the thickness of the total laminate leads to relatively large errors for the impact responses, especially for the impact force-deflection curves. Also, the ratio of absorbed energy to the impact energy increases with the specimen thickness. Therefore, the practical design of composite laminates should be taken into account this difference fully due to manufacturing. © 2017, ASM International.