An experimental study of the dynamic responses of carbon fiber reinforced polymer composite laminates subjected to ice impact

The aircraft structures are threatened by soft material impact such as birds and hail ices. The main objective of this study is to develop a comprehensive experimental method to evaluate the resistance performance of carbon fiber reinforced polymer laminate subjected to ice impact loadings. First, a hollow tube sensor was adopted to measure the impact force of ice projectiles. Based on the deformation process captured by a high-speed camera and the analysis on transmitted energies obtained by the tube sensor, the repeatability of the ice impact loadings was confirmed and its impact behavior was analyzed. Second, six T700/epoxy carbon reinforced polymer laminates were impacted with different loading velocities, where the transient deformation data during impact were obtained by 3D digital image correlation method The post-test detection was realized using both optical microscopes and scanning acoustic microscopes. The impact of ice projectiles resulted in distributed loadings on the laminate targets with invisible inner matrix cracks and delaminations. Irregular distributions of delaminated areas subjected were observed and their sized increased with the impact velocity. The experimental method showed its practicability on impact issues with projectiles of unknown properties.