MESO-SCALE COMPUTATIONAL MODELING OF HYPERVELOCITY IMPACT DAMAGE IN ADVANCED MATERIALS

Modeling of hypervelocity impact (HVI) on materials and structures is often associated with high computational expenses, especially when inhomogeneous materials are involved. To reduce computational cost, complex materials are often represented as homogeneous substances with the effective properties similar to those of the real materials. Although this approach has been successfully used in modeling of HVI on different materials with complex architecture, there are applications where it may not be applicable due to significant influence of materials’ meso-scale features on resulting HVI damage. Two of such applications are considered in this study, and include simulation of HVI on sandwich panels with metallic foam-cores, and composites fabricated by filament winding. In the former case, adequate modeling of the multi-shock action of the foam ligaments on hypervelocity fragment cloud propagating through the foam core requires an explicit representation of the foam geometry in numerical model. In the latter case, the meso-scale modeling is required due to experimentally observed dependence of HVI damage of the composite on the particular filament winding pattern used in its fabrication. The study presents numerical models developed for both of these applications and compares numerical results with obtained experimental data.