Experiments and simulation of the static contact crush of composite laminated plates

Plate specimens were formed from carbon-epoxy prepregs. Thereafter a steel indentor was used to compress the specimens, with the reaction forces were recorded until the plates thoroughly collapsed. The FEM software, ABAQUS, was employed to simulate the crushing of the plates. This investigation creates a user-defined material subroutine to enhance the damage simulation which includes Hashing and Yeh failure criteria. The ultimate strengths of the plates are accurately estimated using the present method of progressive stiffness modification, and the failure observed in experiments closely corresponds to that of the numerical simulations. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.