Impact Resistance Behaviors of Carbon Fiber Fabric Reinforced Composite Laminates with Bio-Inspired Helicoidal Layups

Carbon fiber fabric reinforced composite laminates are widely used in the automotive and aerospace components, which are prone to suffering low velocity impacts. In this paper, helicoidal layups of fabrics inspired by the Bouligand type structure of the dactyl clubs of mantis shrimp are proposed to improve the impact resistance of carbon fiber fabric reinforced composite laminates. Low velocity impact tests and finite element simulation are carried out to investigate the effect of the rotation angle of helicoidal layups on the impact damage behaviors of composite laminates, including impact force response, energy absorption characteristics and damage mechanism. Results show that the simulation results of impact force-time response, absorbed energy-time response, and damage characteristics show good agreements with the experimental results. With the increase in impact energy, the maximum value of impact force, the absorbed energy and the energy absorption ratio for all specimens are all increased. Under all impact energies, the impact damage of specimens with helicoidal layups are lower than that of specimen QI1 (rotation angle of 0°), indicating that the helical layup of woven carbon fabric can sufficiently enhance the impact resistance of the composite material. Furthermore, the impact resistance of specimen HL2 (rotation angle of 12.8°) is the best, because it demonstrates the lowest impact damage and highest impact force under all energies. This work provides a bionic design guideline for the high impact performance of carbon fiber fabric reinforced composite laminate.