Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Metal Type and Thickness Effects on the Impact Resistance of Fiber Metal Laminates

The impact response of fiber metal laminates (FMLs), has been investigated with experiments and numerical simulations, which is reported in this article. Low-velocity impacts were carried out to study the effects of metal type and thickness within FMLs. Glare5-3/2 laminates with two aluminum layer thicknesses and a similar FML containing magnesium sheets were impacted by drop weight tests. Also, a major part of this study was to accomplish a dynamic non-linear transient analysis to study the impact response of FMLs using the commercial finite element (FE) analysis code ABAQUS. By reviewing different approaches of modeling constituents of an FML, it is shown that the appropriate selection of elements has more significant role than failure criterion to predict acceptable results for this type of laminate and loading. The good agreement obtained between experimental and numerical results verifies the possibility of relatively simpler simulation by FE-analysis to predict overall response of FMLs under impact loading.