Impact and Damage of an Armour Composite

The current study assesses the application of the Taylor Test to validate hydrocode modelling of composite materials. 0° in-plane and through-thickness rods were cut from a 25 mm thick composite panel, made from autoclave cured 0°, 90° uni-directional carbon/epoxy prepreg. The rods were fired against a semi-infinite steel anvil and high-speed video imaging was used to capture the difference in rod shape and damage patterns during the experiments. Results of simulation with a rate sensitive, transversely isotropic composite material model implemented in the CTH hydrocode were compared with the present experiments. The model showed good correlation with global deformation of the rods, and was used to qualitatively assess some of the asymmetric deformation features in the material. As the present model implementation did not account for damage at this stage, it did not predict inter-ply delamination normal to the impact face for the in-plane 0° rods and that parallel to the impact face in the through-thickness samples.