Advanced modelling techniques for impact of composite materials

Composite materials have seen increasing use in the aerospace sector, due to their light weight, high stiffness and strength as well as corrosion and fatigue resistance. In service they are subject to impact threats such as bird and hail strike and foreign object damage, and so need to be designed to withstand such loading. Finite element analysis is widely used in the design and structural assessment of candidate designs and in recent years, significant advances have been made in this capability.
However, there still remain challenges, particularly for the complex damage mechanisms that occur under impact loads and so further research is still required to improve predictive capability. This project will develop and validate new modelling techniques, to be implemented in finite element software via custom written user subroutines, in particular focusing on mesh-independent cracking models such as the extended finite element method (XFEM).