A Finite Element Analysis of Damaged Composite Sheet

Abstract

This work is an attempt to study the behavior of a laminated composite sheet when subjected to specific damage cases and harmonic load. The numerical investigation is developed using finite element method with 8-nodes shell element to determine the free vibration and harmonic response by using the ANSYS package. The investigation covers three cases of damage laminate composite sheet with center impact loading.
The work procedure was to model a healthy structure and apply different damage cases in reference to the health structure in order to compute the shift in the stresses distribution in different layers. Damage occurs in several layers of the composite sheet in multiple locations throughout its volume, and through several layers of the sheet.