Investigation of impact and damage tolerance in advanced aerospace composite structures

With the aim of gaining a better understanding of the non-linear behaviour of advanced aerospace composite structures under dynamic loadings, this paper provides an overview of the state of the available analysis tools and reports on the progress of an investigation designed to study the low velocity impact characteristics of such structures. The paper further details the experimental set up and procedures of a drop weight impact test system and the equipment used as well as the specifications of its online data acquisition system. In conclusion, as an indicative verification of the ongoing work, a brief comparison of the test results with the numerical data, obtained from a simulation of the test in a number of explicit non-linear finite element environments, is provided.