JOURNAL OF

COMPOSITE
M AT E R I A L S

Article

Impact damage on fibre-reinforced

polymer matrix composite A review

Journal of Composite Materials

2014, Vol 48(3) 317332
! The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/0021998312472217
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Sandeep Agrawal1, Kalyan Kumar Singh2 and PK Sarkar2

Abstract
As the application of fibre-reinforced polymer composite material continue to increase day by day, so the knowledge
about the impact behaviour of fibre-reinforced polymer composite structures in the areas such as automotive and
aerospace is very much needed. This article attempts a comprehensive review of recent literature in the broader
area of impact damage. Testing methods and standard parameters as well as discussion of important aspects such as
impactor shape, weight of impactor, velocity of impact, environment in which impact takes place are presented.
Furthermore, the damage area, energy absorbed, contact time and many other considerations are discussed. Finally,
an effort is made to review the research work by considering all aspects related to impact on such type of composite
materials.

Keywords
Composites, fibre-reinforced polymer, impact damage

Introduction
In present days bre-reinforced composite materials are
widely used in various engineering applications including automotive, aviation and engineering structures due
to their lightweight, high stiness, strength and damping properties. Air vehicles may be subjected to impact
loads by foreign objects such as debris from runways,
bird strikes or hailstones (during ight). The impact
damage in composite materials may not be detected
sometimes by visual inspection. Such impact-induced
damages occur inside the material and increase after
the onset of small delaminations. In an impact event,
several damage types occur in composite materials such
as matrix cracking, delamination and bre breakage.
Consequently, the impact behaviour of the laminated
composite materials is an important phenomenon to be
studied.1 The brittle nature of most bre-reinforced
polymer (FRP) composites accompanying other forms
of energy absorption mechanisms such as bre breakage, matrix cracking, debonding at the brematrix
interface and especially plies delamination, play
important roles on progressive failure mode and
energy absorption capability of composite structures.
These failure modes under low-velocity impact loading
conditions are strongly dependent on the bre type,
resin type, lay-up, thickness, loading velocity and

projectile type. For low-velocity impact events, the

usage of pendulums like the ones present in the
Charpy test2 and drop towers or drop weights3 has
become standard. The high-energy absorbing capabilities of FRP composite materials are one of the main
factors in their application in automotive and aerospace structures. They also provide other functional
and economic benets such as enhanced strength, durability, weight reduction and hence lower fuel consumption for structural vehicle crashworthiness. FRP
composites are able to collapse in a progressive, controlled manner which results in high specic energy
absorption in the event of crash. Unlike metals and
polymers, the progressive energy absorption of composite structures is dominated by extensive microfracture instead of plastic deformation.47

1
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Hindustan College of Science &
Technology, India
2
Department Of Mechanical Engineering & Mining Machinery Engineering,
Indian School of Mines, India

Corresponding author:
Sandeep Agrawal, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Hindustan
College of Science & Technology, Farah, Mathura 281122, India.
Email: san197012@rediffmail.com

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Impact
In general, impact damage is not considered to be a
threat in metallic structures because of the ductile
nature of the material and the large amount of energy
that can be absorbed. At yield stress, the material may
ow for very large strains at a constant rate before
work hardening, but the composites can fail in a wide
variety of modes and contain impact damages visible by
a naked eye which severely reduces the structural durability of the component. Most composites are brittle
and so they can only absorb energy in elastic deformation and through damage mechanisms, and not via
plastic deformation. The term damage resistance7
refers to the amount of impact damage which is
induced in a composite structure. Most of the impacts
on a composite structure will be in the transverse direction but due to the lack of through thickness
reinforcement, transverse damage resistance is particularly poor. Interlaminar stresses (shear and tension) are
often the stresses that cause primary failure due to the
low interlaminar strengths. As a result, design failure
strains are used to guard against impact failure, resulting in a failure to take advantage of the excellent inplane strength and stiness properties of composites.

Velocity of impact
Impacts are generally classied into three categories as
low-velocity impact, high-velocity impact and sometimes hyper velocity impact, but there is not a clear
transition between categories and authors disagree on
their denition.
Sjoblom et al.8 and Shivakumar et al.9 dene lowvelocity impact as events which can occur in the range
110 m/s depending on the target stiness, material
properties and the impactor mass and stiness.
High-velocity impact response is dominated by stress
wave propagation through the material in which the
structure does not have time to respond, leading to
much localised damage. Boundary condition eects
can be ignored because the impact event is over
before the stress waves have reached the edge of the
structure. In low-velocity impact, the dynamic structural response of the target is of utmost importance
as the contact duration is long enough for the entire
structure to respond to the impact and in consequence
more energy is absorbed elastically.
Cantwell and Morton10 conveniently classied low
velocity as up to 10 m/s, by considering the test techniques which are generally employed in simulating the
impact event (instrumented falling weight impact testing), Charpy, Izod, etc., whilst, in contrast, Abrate11 in
his review of impact on laminated composites stated
that low-velocity impacts occur for impact speeds of
less than l00 m/s.

Liu and Malvem12 and Joshi and Sun13 suggested

that the type of impact can be classied according to
the damage incurred, especially if damage is the prime
concern. High velocity is thus characterised by penetration-induced bre breakage, and low velocity by delamination and matrix cracking.
Davies and Robinson14,15 dene a low-velocity
impact as being one in which the through-thickness
stress waveplays no signicant part in the stress distribution and suggest a simple model to give the transition
to high velocity. A cylindrical zone under the impactor
is considered to undergo a uniform strain as the stress
wave propagates through the plate, giving the compressive strain as14
ec (Impact velocity/speed of sound in the material)
For failure strains between 0.5% and l%, this
gives the transition to stress wave dominated events
at 1020 m/s for epoxy composites.

Impact tests
To simulate actual impact by a foreign object, a
number of test procedures have been suggested by
many researchers. The initial kinetic energy of the projectile is an important parameter to be considered, but
several other factors also aect the response of the
structure. A large mass with low initial velocity may
not cause the same amount of damage as a smaller
mass with higher velocity, even if the kinetic energies
are exactly the same.
At the moment, two types of tests are used by most
investigators, although many details of the actual test
apparatus may dier. Experimental studies attempt to
replicate actual situations under controlled conditions.
For example, during aircraft takeo and landing,
debris ying from the runway can cause damage; this
situation, with small high-velocity projectiles, is best
simulated using a gas gun. Another concern is the
impact of a composite structure by a larger projectile
at low velocity which occurs when tools are accidentally
dropped on a structure. This situation is best simulated
using a drop weight tester.
Drop weight testers (Figure 1) are used extensively
and can be of dierent designs. Heavy impactors are
usually guided by a rail during free fall from a given
height.16 Usually, a sensor activates a mechanical
device designed to prevent multiple impacts after the
impactor bounces backup.
Pendulum-type systems (Charpy impact tests) are
used to generate low-velocity impacts. Pendulum-type
testers consist of a steel ball hanging from a string, or a
heavier projectile equipped with force transducers or
velocity sensors. The Hopkinson-type pressure bar
technique was also used. Ghasemnejad et al.17 used a
Charpy impact device consisting of three main parts of

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319
signicant eect on the dynamic response of the structure. Researchers and practitioners are also interested
in properties of the matrix, the bres and the bre
matrix interface which control the initiation and
growth of impact damage. The thickness of the laminates, the size of the panel and the boundary conditions
are all factors that inuence the impact dynamics, since
they control the stiness of the target. The characteristics of the projectile including its weight, shape, elastic
properties and incident angles are other parameters to
be considered. The layup, stitching, preload and environmental conditions are important factors which are to
be given attention.

Projectile characteristics

Figure 1. The drop-weight impact tower.16

specimens, anvil where the specimen is free supported

and also a pendulum with a dened mass attached to a
rotating arm pinned at the machine body. The Charpy
impact test rig with a dial and a pendulum is shown in
Figure 2. The dial gives readings of the absorbed energy
by the material during impact test which is measured in
Joules.

Parameters affecting impact damage

The extensive experimental work conducted upto now
created an understanding of the parameters that aect
the initiation and growth of impact damage. Material
properties aect the overall stiness of the structure
and the contact stiness and therefore will have a

Impactor shape and weight of impactor play a signicant role in impact damage. In past research, the most
common impactor shape used has been hemispherical.
However, a dropped tool on a composite panel during
maintenance may not always impact the panel with a
blunt shape such as a hemisphere. Apart from the
common hemispherical impactor, some researchers
have used other impactor shapes such as at-ended
and conical. These experiments have been conducted
under varying conditions, which make it impossible to
compare the results since there are many parameters
that can aect the impact response of composite laminates. Research which considered the eect of impactor
shape has predominantly been in the high-velocity
impact eld where, for instance, the impact resistance
of armour has led to research into the ballistic limit of
projectile shapes. However, it is known that specimens
react dierently to high-velocity impacts where there is
a localised response compared to low-velocity impacts
where a global response may predominate.
Yang and Cantwell16 investigated the damage initiation in glass bre (GF) reinforced epoxy plates subjected to low-velocity impact loading by considering the
eect of key parameters such as target size, projectile
diameter and test temperature on damage initiation.
The experimental data have been analysed using
simple energy based and stress-based models. The
results show that the damage initiation threshold
force, Pcrit varies with t3/2where t is the thickness of
the composite. For a given target thickness, the Pcrit
does not exhibit a dependency on the plate diameter
for the range of target geometries. It was also found
that at elevated temperature, the damaged threshold
also follows t3/2 dependency. The damage threshold
varied with projectile diameter with Pcrit increasing
steadily with increasing projectile diameter.
In Mitrevski et al.18, the eects of impactor shape
was investigated using hemispherical, ogival and
conical impactors as shown in Figure 3 on carbon/

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Journal of Composite Materials 48(3)

Figure 2. The Zwick/Roell Charpy test rig: (a) side view and (b) front view.17

Figure 3. (a) Hemispherical tup; (b) ogival tup; and (c) conical tup.18

epoxy laminates. It was found that the specimens

impacted by the conical impactor absorbed the most
energy and produced the largest penetration depth.
The blunter hemispherical impactor produced the largest peak force and shortest contact duration. The
damage threshold load was highest for the hemispherical impactor followed by the ogival and conical impactors, respectively.
The residual tensile and compressive strengths of
composite laminates are inuenced by the damage

area and mechanisms induced by the impact.11,1924

Dierent impactor shapes will produce dierent
damage mechanisms and areas in composite laminates;
hence the residual properties of the material will change
according to the impactor shape. It is, therefore,
important to investigate the eects of dierent impactor
shapes on the damage resistance and tolerance of composite laminates. Lee et al.25 conducted low-velocity
impact tests on simply supported sheet moulding
compound laminates. Conical, at, hemispherical and

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321

semi-cylinder impactors were used to impact specimens

of 2.4 mm thickness at initial impact energy of 54.5 J.
They found that at and hemispherical impactors produced similar failure mechanisms and energy dissipation levels. The semi-cylindrical impactor produced a
vertically propagating crack (i.e. through thickness).
The local indentation induced by the at and hemispherical impactors resulted in an increase in energy
dissipation compared to the semi-cylindrical impactor.
Local penetration was observed from the conical
impactor which resulted in the lowest dissipated
impact energy. They also found that the type of failure
mechanism induced by the impact aected the energy
dissipation capacity of the specimen. Using nite element analysis, Kim and Goo26 modelled the eect of
altering the ratio between impactor nose lengths to
impactor radius, where a ratio of one represents a hemispherical impactor, on the impact response of GF reinforced plastic (GFRP). The ratios tested were 0.1, 1 and
10. It was found that as the ratio decreased (became
more blunt), the peak force increased and the impact
duration decreased.
Zhou et al.27 applied a quasi-static load to nine-ply,
twill-weave, carbon/epoxy laminates with a nominal
thickness of 2 mm through hemispherical and at
indentors of two sizes: 8 and 20 mm. The change in
indentor nose shape resulted in a change in failure
mode. For the hemispherical indentor, it was found
for most cases that matrix cracking initiated, followed
by bre fracture. With the at indentor, ply shear-out
was found to be the dominant failure mechanism since
stress concentration underneath the indentor spread
into a greater area. This was also found by Zhou28
who used a at impactor to impact various types of
GFRP. Under static test conditions, Mines et al.29
found at and hemispherical impactors produced
larger delamination areas compared to a conical impactor in both woven and z-stitched laminates of varying
thickness. This suggests that damage caused by conical
impactors is more localised, which is supported by the
local penetration found by Lee et al.25 Further research
is done under dynamic conditions to determine whether
the damage areas follow the trend produced under
static conditions by Mines et al.29
The inuence of indentor geometry on damage
development in composite materials has been investigated by a number of researchers.30,31 Siow and Shim32
showed that impactors with a small radius of curvature
produce a larger delamination area and greater bre
breakage than those with a larger radius. Wakayama
et al.31 observed a change in failure mode from bre
fracture to delamination as the impactor radius was
increased, during drop-weight impact tests on lament-wound carbon bre reinforced plastics (CFRP)
pipes. Mitrevski et al.18 investigated the inuence of

indentor shape on damage initiation in thin woven

CFRP laminates. They showed that hemispherical
indentors gave a higher peak force and shorter contact
duration than either conical or ogival impactors. The
hemispherical indentor resulted in barely visible impact
damage following a 4 J impact, whereas the sharper
indentors produced permanent indentation and
penetration.

Material properties
Mechanical properties of bre-reinforced composites
are dependent on the properties of the constituent
materials (type, quantity, bre distribution and orientation and void content). Beside these properties, the
nature of the interfacial bonds and the mechanisms of
load transfer at the interface also play an important
role. If the building parts of composites dier in physical form and in chemical composition, only a weak
interaction can be developed at the interface. For
improving the adhesion between the matrix and the
bres, there are varieties of modication technique
depending on the bre and matrices type. One of
them is the application of coupling agents, which are
able to establish chemical bonds between the bre and
the matrix due to their chemical composition. The price
of surface modier chemicals is one of the key points in
the applicability of reinforced composites.33 Polyesters
could not be applied for technological purposes without
reinforcing because of low strength and brittleness, but
they are intensively used for composite matrices.34,35
The GF composites are the most wide spread among
bre-reinforced materials due to their favourable mechanical and economical characteristics. For industrial
applications, the E- and S-type GFs are the most commonly used because they have the most favourable
cost-mechanical property relationships. Thermoset
composites have been applied in 1940s in aircraft industry for the rst time. Those materials were laminated
polyester composites, and the rst application was the
cover of radar antennas because there was a need for
such non-metallic materials that allowed radio waves
through without distortion. The manufactured parts
were found to have better weight/volume ratio than
the ones made from metallic materials. Since then,
thermoset composites have been applied as construction materials. Current civil aircraft applications have
concentrated on replacing the secondary structure with
brous composites, where the reinforcement material
has either been carbon, glass, Kevlar, or hybrids of
those.36
Several authors have been studying the eect of
composite hybridisation on high-velocity impact behaviour.3739 Novak and De Crescente40 showed that the
addition of GF to CFRP and boron/epoxy system

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Journal of Composite Materials 48(3)

could improve the impact strength by a factor of 35.

Crack growth in hybrid brous composites was studied
by McColl and Morley.41 It was shown that the stability of transverse crack in a very brittle matrix could be
increased substantially by inclusion of a second bre
component designed specially to increase the work of
fracture of the matrix. Bunsell and Harris42 have shown
that the strips of GFRP incorporated into CFRP
laminates acts as ecient crack stoppers only if the
strip width is greater than a limiting value. This could
indicate that hybrids in which the dierent types of
bre were more intimately mixed and not in welldened planes would not perform as well in terms of
fracture resistance. The same authors concluded that
the work of fracture by impact and the exural elastic
modulus of mixed GFRP/CFRP composites are both
simple functions of composition corresponding to a
rule of mixture based on the properties of plain
GFRP and CFRP.43 Jang et al.44 showed that hybridising graphite composites with additional tough high
strain-to-failure bres give better damage resistance of
composite structures under impact loading. The
obtained results also imply that the stacking sequence
is a major factor governing the overall energy absorbing capability of the hybrid structure, and the penetration resistance of hybrid composites appeared to be
dictated by the toughness (strength plus ductility) of
their constituent bres.45

Laminate thickness, layup and stitching

Target stiness depends on material properties as well
as on the thickness of the laminate, the layup, its size
and the boundary conditions. The stiness in the thickness direction has a signicant eect on the magnitude
of the maximum contact force which of course will
aect the extent of the damage induced.
The stacking sequence also plays a very important
role on the impact resistance of laminates. In a unidirectional laminate, since the reinforcing bres are all
oriented in the same direction, no delamination
occurs. For two plates with the same thickness but
with dierent stacking sequences, the one with the
higher dierences of angle between two adjacent plies
will experience higher delamination areas. Increasing
the thickness of each layer will also lead to increased
delaminations. Increasing the dierence between the
longitudinal and transverse moduli of the material
leads to higher bending stiness mismatching and
therefore increased delaminations. However, damage
initiation is matrix- and interface-dependent and therefore has little or no dependence on the stacking
sequence. The peak load reached during impact or the
energy at peak load is strongly dependent on the stacking sequence.11

Stitching is used to introduce through the thickness

reinforcement but in a dierent way than with weaving
or braiding. The laminated structure is preserved and
stitching can be performed on either a prepeg or preform. Stitching density and pattern and properties of
the thread can be varied to improve delamination
resistance.
Sadasivam and Mallick46 have studied the lowenergy impact characteristics of four dierent E-GF
reinforced thermoplastic and thermosetting matrix
composites. Low-energy impact caused dent on the
impacted side and surface cracks on the unimpacted
side of all four composites. The damage size, maximum
impact load, deection at the maximum load and tup
velocity dissipation of the four composites are compared. The residual tensile strength of the impactdamaged composites is also determined as a function
of the input impact energy.
Caprino et al.47 have performed low-velocity impact
tests on carbon/epoxy laminates of dierent thicknesses. They have examined the force and absorbed
energy at the onset of delamination, the maximum
force and related energy and penetration energy.
From the experimental results, all these quantities,
except the energy for delamination initiation, followed
the same trend, increasing to the power of approximately 1.5 with increasing plate thickness. Some experimental investigations have been carried out by Hosur
et al.48 to determine the response of four dierent combinations of hybrid laminates subjected to low-velocity
impact loading. They have indicated that there was
considerable improvement in the load-carrying capability of hybrid composites as compared to carbon/epoxy
laminates with slight reduction in stiness. Datta
et al.49 have investigated the eects of variable impact
energy and laminate thickness on the low-velocity
impact damage tolerance of GFRP composite laminates. Critical values of impact energy and laminate
thickness were also dened. Baucom and Zikry50 have
conducted an experimental study to understand the
eects of reinforcement geometry on damage progress
in woven composite panels under repeated impact loading. The composite systems included a two-dimensional
(2D) plain-woven laminate, a 3D orthogonally woven
monolith, and a bi-axially reinforced warp-knit. The
radial spread of damage was smallest for the 2D laminates and largest for the 3D woven composites. The 3D
composites had the greatest resistance to penetration
and dissipated more total energy than the other systems. Fuoss et al.51,52 have worked on the eects of
key stacking sequence parameters on the impact
damage resistance in composite laminates. A nite
element model using linear, quasi-static analysis
was developed to analyse the internal stress state
in the laminate and predict delamination damage.

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323

A parameter based on bending strain is proposed as a

method of predicting the impact damage resistance in a
composite laminate with respect to changes in stacking
sequence. The method was evaluated by ranking laminates for damage resistance using the proposed parameter and comparing the results with existing
experimental and numerical results. The results were
generally positive, as the damage resistance parameter
had a high linear correlation with the experimentally
measured or numerically predicted damage areas.
Rydin et al.53 have investigated the inuence of
impact velocity on woven and non-woven composites.
For the range of impact velocities attainable in a typical
drop weight impact tower (<7 m/s), impact energy and
contact force determine the extent and type of damage.
Impact velocity determines the initial loading slope and
time taken to reach maximum load; however, it only
marginally inuences inelastic damage accumulation.
Kim and Sham54 have presented an overview of fracture behaviour and delamination failure mechanism of
woven composites subjected to impact loading. In their
study, the advantages of using woven fabrics over
cross-ply laminates based on microstructure property
analysis have also been presented. Naik et al.55,56
have investigated the eect of plate thickness and
impact parameters on the impact response of woven
composites under low-velocity point impact. It is
observed that for the materials tested, damage tolerance is higher for low mass and high-velocity combination as compared to high mass and low-velocity
combination. The in-plane failure functions and the
interlaminar failure functions have been predicted
using quadratic failure criteria.
Atas and Dahsin57 and Liu58 have investigated the
impact response of woven composites with small weaving angles. They have presented a method for preparing
novel woven composites with small weaving angles.
Eects of the weaving angle on impact characteristics
such as peak force, contact duration, maximum deection and absorbed energy were also examined. Liu58 has
presented a method called the energy proling method
to characterise some impact properties, e.g. penetration
and perforation thresholds. Results from the energy
proling technique show that the penetration and perforation thresholds increase nearly linearly with the size
of the impactor while they increase nonlinearly with the
laminate thickness. A sandwich composite made of two
glass/epoxy laminates and a foam material is found to
have higher energy absorption eciency than a bonded
laminate.
Liu et al.59 have carried out an experimental study to
obtain the perforation threshold of laminated composite plates having dierent thicknesses and bending stiness. Results show that thickness is more ecient than
bending stiness on the perforation threshold.

Symons60 has investigated the characterisation of highand low-speed impact damage in CFRP. For the same
impact energies, results show that the same delamination
areas occur under high- and low-velocity impacts
although the permanent indentation is greater for highspeed than low-speed impact. Aktas et al.61 and Icten
et al.62 have investigated the impact response of unidirectional glass/epoxy laminates in room and low-temperature conditions by considering energy prole
diagrams and associated loaddeection curves.
Results show that the penetration threshold for [0 /90 /
45 /45 ]S is smaller than that of [0 /90 /0 /90 ]S.
Freitas et al.63 have carried out a numerical study to
examine the failure mechanism in composite specimens
subjected to impact loading. Results show that the
numerical evaluation of impact with a linear static
nite element analysis is not very accurate, but it gives
a meaningful insight on the major mechanisms of failure.
Zhang et al.64 have done a series of nite element analyses
using ABAQUS commercial software to predict damage
initiation and propagation in laminated carbon/epoxy
composite plates subjected to low-velocity impact. A
damage surface which combines stress-based and fracture mechanics based failure criteria is set up to derive the
damage evolution law. The damage model is implemented into a commercial nite element package,
ABAQUS, via its user subroutine VUINTER.
Numerical results on (04, 904)s carbonepoxy laminated
plates subjected to transversely low-velocity impact are
in good agreement with experimental observations.
Olsson et al.65 have predicted the delamination
threshold load for small mass/high-velocity impact on
transversely isotropic plates with dierent thicknesses
using LS-DYNA nite element software. The predicted
delamination threshold loads and velocities are in very
good agreement with the nite element simulations.
Good agreement is also shown in a comparison with
published experimental results. In contrast to quasistatic impacts, delamination growth occurs under a
rapidly decreasing load. Inclusion of nite thickness
eects and a proper description of the contact stiness
are found to be vital for accurate prediction of the
delamination threshold velocity.
Aslan et al.66 have carried out an experimental and
numerical study to investigate the in-plane dimension
eect on the impact response of cross-ply glass/epoxy
laminated composite plates under low-velocity impact.
Results show that the impact behaviour of composite
structures is directly dependent on their in-plane dimensions. Tiberkak et al.67 have studied the damage prediction in composite plates subjected to low-velocity
impact by the use of nite element analysis. Results
showed that the increase of the 90 plies causes increase
in the contact force and a reduction in the rigidity of
laminate. Mili and Necib68 have considered the impact

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behaviour of glass/epoxy laminated composite plates

under low-velocity impact theoretically and experimentally. Tita et al.69 have conducted experimental and
numerical studies to examine the stacking sequence
and impact energy eect on thin carbon/epoxy laminated composite plates under low-velocity impact.
The inuence of stacking sequence and energy impact
was investigated using loadtime histories, displacementtime histories and energytime histories as well
as images from NDE. Indentation tests results were
compared to dynamic results, verifying the inertia
eects when thin composite laminate was impacted by
foreign object with low velocity. For the experimental
approach, it is veried that stacking sequence and
impact energy level can inuence the dynamic response
of composite plates. The graphs of forcetime and
energytime, as well as the images fromultrasonic
C-scan technique are used in order to compare the
mechanical behaviour of the specimens. The indentation test can be used to represent a drop-test when the
impact energy level is low and the specimen has a quasielastic behaviour. Because the indentation curves do
not show the oscillations inherent in the dynamic
response obtained in drop-tests, there is more failure
mechanisms activated during the impact event than in
quasi-static event. Besides, the failure mechanisms
shown by the impact event are more distributed and
with a quasi-static event they are more concentrated.
Thus, the structural global stiness reduces with more
intensity for drop-test. Finally, it is very important to
comment that the experimental test results for this
study were used to validate and calibrate a composite
material failure model developed by the authors. Li
et al.70 have done an experimental and numerical investigation on low-velocity impact-induced damage of
continuous bre-reinforced composite laminates.
Results show that the maximum contact force decreases
while the maximum deection increases with increasing
of the plate thickness. In addition, the inuence of the
boundary condition on the maximum contact force,
maximum deection and delamination size is very
small. However, the impactor mass has a signicant
eect on the impact behaviour of the composite plates.

Preload
Many researchers have analytically and experimentally
investigated the low-velocity impact behaviour of composite laminated structures.70 Most composite structures will be under some level of stress when
impacted. For example, the upper layer of the main
wing of the aircraft will be mainly under in-plane compressive load during ight and the lower one will be
under in-plane tensile load. So, foreign objects like
hail and debris in the runway shall give an impact to

composite laminated structure under in-plane load.

Very often, a composite structure experiences impact
loading in addition to the pre-existing stresses produced
either by service loads or by manufacturing/assembly
process. A common example is that of the structure of
an aircraft which during ight may experience bird-hit,
etc., while it is highly stressed due to various service
loads. However, not much literature is available on
the impact response of composite structures with
prestresses.
Chen and Sun71 have developed a nite element program to analyse the impact response of the composite
laminate under biaxial in-plane load. Using the nite
element program, they solved for three cases of in-plane
load, tension/tension load of three times of critical
buckling load of the plate, compression/compression
load of 75% of the critical bucking load and no initial
in-plane load. The impact condition is the case that the
mass of the impactor is very small and the impact velocity is very high. They concluded that the initial tensile
in-plane load tends to intensify the contact force while
reducing the contact time and an opposite conclusion is
obtained for an initial compressive in-plane load.
Except for this study, it is very rare to nd another
analytical result on the impact behaviour of the composite laminates under in-plane load. Kelkar et al.72
reported an experimental and analytical result on the
impact behaviour and the damage area through dropweight type impact test, which includes three cases of
thickness of the laminate (16, 32 and 48 plies) and four
cases of tensile in-plane load (0, 800, 1600 and 2400 me).
Their experimental result showed that as the initial inplane load increases, the impact duration decreases and
the impact load increases. Also, it was observed that as
the initial in-plane load increases, in the case of 16-ply
laminates, the damage area increases. However, in the
case of 32-ply thick laminates, there was a marginal
increase in the damage area. In the case of 48-ply
thick laminates, for lower impact energy, there was a
marginal increase in the damage area. However, for
larger impact energy, there was a reduction in the
damage area. They tried an analytical prediction of
the damage area from quasi-static solution using commercial nite element analysis software, but detailed
numerical output could not be found.72 Mitrevski
et al.73 presented the experimental results on the
impact behaviour of carbon/epoxy and glass/polyester
composite. They concluded that as the initial tensile inplane load increases, the contact duration decreases;
however, the initial tensile in-plane load has not
aected the maximum contact force and the damage
area. An experimental investigation on this aspect of
composite structures has been recently carried out by
Whittingham et al.74 In this study, laminated plates of
carbon bre reinforced composites were subjected to

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325

low-velocity impact while uniaxial or biaxial prestresses

already existed in the plane of the plates. Both tensile
and compressive preloads were used and impacts of two
magnitudes (measured in terms of impact energy) were
produced. It was shown that at low-impact energy, the
indentation depth and the peak load are independent of
the nature and magnitude of prestresses. Robb et al.75
investigated the damage phenomenon and damage tolerance of chopped strand matt laminates under impact
loading in the presence of uniaxial and biaxial prestresses. It is observed that the shape, orientation and
size of the damage zone is strongly inuenced by the
nature and magnitude of the prestrain. Impact specimens subject to shear loading exhibit the largest
increase in damage area when compared to unstressed
plates.

Environmental conditions
A few researchers have also showed the eect of environmental aspects on impact damage such as low temperature, UV rays, etc. Because most composite
structures are used outdoors, it cannot be avoided
that composite structures are subjected to various
environmental conditioning. The study of impact and
post impact response of laminated composites subjected to environmental conditioning other than ambient is more realistic. Karasek et al.76 have evaluated the
inuence of temperature and moisture on the impact
resistance of an epoxy/graphite composite. They have
found that only at elevated temperatures, the moisture
had a signicant eect on damage initiation energy and
that the energy required for initiating damage had been
found to decrease with temperature. The investigations
by Bibo et al.77 have shown that temperature is capable
of altering the nature and extent of impact induced
damages. Parvatareddy et al.78 have investigated the
low-velocity impact behaviour of laminated composites
aged at elevated temperature in both air and nitrogen
environments. They have indicated that the ageing
environment has a signicant eect on the residual tensile strength. Hale et al.79 have found that the eect of
temperature and moisture is interactive. The loss of
strength and stiness of laminated composites at elevated temperatures is exacerbated by the increased rate
of water absorption at high temperatures. Li et al.80
have investigated the eect of cycling moisture on the
low-velocity impact behaviour of laminated composites
at elevated temperatures. Their results show that the
rst moisture cycle has a signicant eect on reducing
the low-velocity impact resistance of laminated composites. Elevated temperature accelerates the damaging
eect of cycling moistures. Pang et al.81 have investigated the eect of ultraviolet radiation on the lowvelocity impact response of laminated beams.

They have found that UV radiation alone has a signicant eect on reducing the residual load-carrying capacity of impact damaged laminated beams. The
presence of water increased the damage eect of UV
radiation. Ibekwe et al.82 investigated low-velocity
impact response and post-impact compression buckling
strength of GF reinforced unidirectional and cross-ply
laminated composite beams at low temperatures and
showed that the temperature has a signicant eect
on the low-velocity impact responses of laminated composites. More impact damage is induced in specimens
impacted at lower temperatures than those at higher
temperatures. The residual compressive buckling
strength and elastic modulus increase until a certain
point as temperature drops, at a much lower temperature both the residual compressive buckling strength
and the elastic modulus drop. It was also found that
the impact damage and the temperature have an opposite eect on the residual compressive buckling strength
and elastic modulus. The impact damage reduces the
residual compressive strength while the low temperature tends to increase it. Salehi-Khojin et al.83 investigated the role of temperature on impact properties of
Kevlar/breglass composite laminates. In this investigation, impact energy level and temperature were found
to have signicant eects on the impact behaviour of
breglass and combinations of breglass with Kevlar.
At low impact energy, the amount of maximum
absorbed energy is almost constant and independent
of temperature. With increasing energy level, absorbed
energy becomes more and more dependent on temperature. At each of the impact energies, maximum deection is a function of impact energy and temperature
such that maximum deection increases with a corresponding increase in impact energy or temperature.
A few studies have focused on the eect of temperature on the impact response of polymer matrix composites. A decrease in delamination area was reported84
with increase in temperature in the range between
40 C and 70 C for a carbon bre composite laminate
subjected to high energy impact. In a similar highvelocity impact study on cross-ply laminates of polyethylene bre/epoxy matrix system,85 it was found that
the damage initiation energy doubled when the temperature was increased from 50 C to 100 C. In contrast, laminates containing plain-weave fabrics showed
very little inuence of temperature on the total impact
energy required for complete penetration of the specimen. Son and Kwon Young86 studied the eect of temperature variation (30 C to 120 C) on damage to
orthotropic CFRP laminates at non-penetrating
impact velocities (upto 100 m/s). They observed a
linear relationship between the impact energy and the
delaminated area as well as an increase in the damage
area as the temperature decreased.

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Journal of Composite Materials 48(3)

Damage initiation
Impact damage usually follows some very complex distributions and it may not be possible to reconstruct the
entire sequence of events leading to a given damage
state. For low-velocity impact damage starts with the
creation of a matrix crack. In some cases, the target is
exible and the crack is created by tensile exural stresses in the bottom ply of laminate, this crack, which is
usually perpendicular to the plane of the laminate, is
called a tensile crack.2 For thick laminates, cracks
appear near the top of the laminate and are created
by the contact stresses. These cracks, called shear
cracks,2 are inclined relative to the mid-plane. Matrix
cracks induce delaminations at interfaces between adjacent plies and initiate a pattern of damage evolution
either from the bottom up or from the top down.
Therefore, while it is possible to predict the onset of
damage, a detailed prediction of the nal damage
state cannot realistically be achieved.
Two types of approaches are used for predicting
impact damage. The rst approach is aimed at predicting the overall damage size. It is based on the premise
that delaminations, which are the critical component of
impact damage, grow because of high transverse shear
stresses in the vicinity of the impactor. The idea is to
determine the distribution of the transverse shear force
resultant around the point of impact and to use an
appropriate failure criterion to estimate the size of the
damage zone.
The second approach to be discussed here deals with
the prediction of the threshold value of the contact
force that corresponds to damage initiation. When the
damage area is plotted versus the maximum impact
force, there is a clear sudden increase in damage size
once the load reaches a critical value Pcrit. Below this
critical value, the damage area is small due to Hertzian
surface (a surface according to Hertz contact law) and
Pcrit corresponds to the onset delaminations.2
Under low-velocity impact loading conditions, the
time of contact between projectile and target are relatively long. The load history can yield important information concerning damage initiation and growth.8791
Several investigators used the force history to compare
the structural response from impact tests. As pointed
out in the literature, the rst load drop, in terms of
Hertzian failure or signicant damage corresponds to
the occurrence of initial damage in the form of matrix
cracking, bre breakage and local puncture or indentation.8996 Davies and Zhang88 pointed out that the rst
damage threshold is probably due to the initialisation
of delamination failure. Belingardi and Vadori91
dened two thresholds from the load history. The rst
one was at the rst load drop for the rst material
damage and the second one was the maximum force
value for the rst lamina failure.

Davies et al.87 proposed an equation for a critical

force threshold
P2crit 82 Eh3 GIIc =91  v2
where Pcrit is the threshold load, E and  the equivalent
in-plane modulus and Poisson ratio, h the laminate
thickness and GIIc the critical strain energy release
rate. The model indicates that the square of the critical
force threshold is proportional to the cube of the laminate thickness. The predictions from this equation for
delamination initiation agreed well with their experimental data.88,89 Sjoblom97 also predicted that the critical damage initiation load should increase with t3/2.
However, some results showed that the delamination
threshold load varied with the laminate thickness to
the 3/2 power.90,97 Fibre failure occurs under the
impactor due to locally high stresses and indentation
eects. Belingardi and Vadori91 dene a term of saturation impact energy, which is the maximum energy
bearable by the material without perforation.
Dorey98 gives a simple equation for the energy
required for bre failure and for penetration
E  2 wtL=18Ef
where  is the exural strength, Ef the exural modulus,
w the width, L the unsupported length and t the specimen thickness.
Aktas et al.99 presented a schematic illustration for
dierent damage modes in composite laminates, as
shown in Figure 4.

Damage propagation
When a solid is subjected to any kind of loading, static
or impact, it can absorb energy by two basic mechanism creations of new surfaces and material deformation. The material deformation occurs rst. If the
energy supplied is large enough, a crack may initiate
and propagate, thus actuating the second energyabsorbing mechanism. The material deformation
continues in advance of the crack during crack propagation. In the case of brittle materials such as glass and
other ceramics only a small amount of deformation
takes place. The associated energy absorbed is also
small. As a consequence, brittle materials exhibit a
low energy absorption capability.
Impact energy (Ei) and absorbed energy (Ea) are two
main parameters that can be used to assess damage
propagation in composite structures after an impact
event. Ei can be dened as the kinetic energy of the
impactor right before contactimpact takes place
while Ea is termed as the amount of energy absorbed
by the composite specimen at the end of an impact

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327

Figure 4. Schematic illustrations for different damage modes.99

Figure 5. Calculation of the absorbed energy from loaddeflection curves for a non-perforated specimen (a) and a perforated
specimen (b).100

event. Absorbed energy can be calculated from load

deection (Fd) curves. Figure 5 shows two typical Fd
curves encountered in an impact event. Shaded areas in
Figure 5(a) and (b) represent the energies absorbed by
specimens during impact tests resulting in closed- and
open-type curves, respectively. Open-type Fd curves
have a horizontal section at the very end, postperforation frictional section. In order to identify the
true energy absorption due to damage formation in the
specimens, the post-perforation frictional sections need
to be removed from the curves.100 For this purpose, the

ending part of the descending section of the Fd curve

may be extended to the deection axis, shown as the
dashed line in Figure 5(b).
Karakuzu et al.101 plotted the impact energy versus
the absorbed energy for equal mass and equal velocity
as shown in Figure 6 using energy proling diagrams.59,61 That is, variation of the absorbed energy
versus impact energy is plotted for two equal parameters; mass and velocity. It is clearly observed from
Figure 6 that all the specimens are of the rebounding
case. However, the specimen subjected to 40 J for equal

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Journal of Composite Materials 48(3)

Figure 6. Energy profiling diagram for the experimental results.101

Figure 7. The variation of impact energy versus (a) maximum contact force, (b) maximum deflection and (c) contact time depending
on the equal mass and the equal velocity.101

velocity has reached the penetration threshold. In addition, the energy absorption capability of the specimen
subjected to equal mass is lower than the specimen subjected to equal velocity, for the same impact energy.
They have carried out an experimental and numerical study to investigate the eect of the equal impact
energy (40 J), equal impactor mass (5 kg) and equal velocity (2 m/s) on the contact force, deection, contact

time, damage area and absorbed energy of glass/

epoxy laminated composite plates by taking the orientation [0 /30 /60 /90 ]s. The equal impact energy
remained constant by changing the impact velocity or
the impactor mass. The numerical analysis was done
using 3DIMPACT nite element code. Results show
that the energy absorption capability of the specimens
subjected to equal mass is lower than the specimens

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329

subjected to equal velocities and the eects of the equal

mass and the equal velocity on the maximum contact
force and maximum deection are nearly the same
while the impact energy increases. For a better understanding of the impact behaviour of glass/epoxy composite plates, only the maximum values of the contact
force, maximum deection and contact time are shown
in Figure 7. As observed from the gure, the equal mass
and the equal velocity have nearly the same eects on
the maximum contact force and maximum deection
while the impact energy increases (Figure 7(a) and
(b)). However, the eect of both on the contact time
diers from each other (Figure 7(c)).
The various mechanisms involved during crack
propagation account for the total energy absorbed in
a fracture process. Obviously, the same mechanisms
will not be important in all combinations of matrix
and bre materials. No single mechanism can account
for the observed toughness of composites. The various
failure mechanisms are bre breakage, matrix deformation and cracking, bre debonding, bre pullout and
delamination cracks.
Spall strength of GFs reinforced epoxy composites
were measured by Zaretsky et al.102 It was found that
three possible failure modes as debonding, delamination and matrix cracking for the composite resulted
in large variations of the spall strength. A nucleation
and growth model together with a fracture model that
were applied by Tokheim et al.,103 provided good estimates for corresponding experimental measurements of
spall strength in a Kevlar bres reinforced epoxy composite. Delamination strength of GFs reinforced composites were measured by Dandekar et al.104 under
plane normal and oblique impact conditions. A threshold shock-induced compression stress beyond which
delamination will occur due to refracted tensile waves
was determined. The values of the threshold and delamination tensile stresses were found to depend strongly
on the angle of the impact relative to the bres plane.
Syam et al.105 examined the fracture mechanism in reinforced plastics. It was found that the damage zone consisted of matrix cracking, fractured bres and
debonding between the bres and the matrix.

signicant damages such as matrix cracks, delaminations and bre fractures. Numerous studies on the
impact response of composite materials and structures
can be found in review papers.
Low-velocity impact refers to impacts in the range
110 m/s which are ordinarily introduced in the laboratory by mechanical test machines. The contact period is
such that the whole structure has time to respond to the
loading. The modes of impact damage induced range
from matrix cracking and delamination through to
bre failure and penetration. Damage mode interaction
must also be understood when attempting to predict
initiation and propagation of a particular form of
damage. Toughened resins or thermoplastics can
reduce matrix-dominated damage but the bres have
the most bearing on impact response and over the
narrow velocity range under consideration, the strain
rate sensitivity of bres can be ignored. Post-impact
performance is related to the major damage mode;
therefore, a combination of tension and compression
residual strength testing is required to characterise the
laminate.
Polymer-matrix composites are known to be highly
susceptible to internal damage caused by transverse
loads even under low-velocity impacts. The composites
can be damaged on the surface. They can also be
damaged beneath the surface by relatively light impacts
causing barely visible impact damage, while the surface
may appear to be undamaged to visual inspection. For
the eective use of polymer-matrix composites for highperformance applications, understanding the causes
of the formation of such damage when subjected to
low- and high-velocity impact and improving the
damage-resistance characteristics of the composites are
important considerations. Vast research has been performed on simple geometry carbon/epoxy cross-ply
laminates consisting of plies at various bre orientations,
due to their importance in the aerospace industry. The
low-velocity impact response of random bre/unidirectional laminate combinations and impacts on complex
geometry are less well documented, and more research
work is required in these areas if composite laminates are
to be employed in more structural applications.

Conclusion

Funding

There has been a growing interest, particularly in the

past few decades, in the use of composite materials in
structural applications ranging from aircraft and space
structures to automotive and biomedical applications.
However, their behaviour under impact loading is one
of the major concerns, since impacts do occur during
manufacture, normal operations, maintenance, etc.
Especially, unidirectional laminated plates are highly
susceptible to the transverse impact loads resulting in

This research received no specic grant from any funding

agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-prot sectors.

Conflict of interest
None declared.

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