Failure criterion for laminated glass under impact loading and its application in finite element simulation

A failure criterion for laminated glass in case of impact is presented. The main idea of this criterion is that a critical energy threshold must be reached over a finite region before failure can occur. Afterwards crack initiation and growth is based on a local Rankine (maximum stress) criterion. The criterion was implemented in an explicit finite element solver. Different strategies for modeling laminated glass are also discussed. To calibrate the criterion and evaluate its accuracy, a wide range of experiments with plane and curved specimens of laminated glass were done. For all experiments finite element simulations were performed. The comparison between measured and simulated results shows that the criterion works very well. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.