Modeling of high velocity hailstone impact onto composite material panel

The impact of hailstones on aircraft with cruise velocity is probable to cause damage or delamination in composite structures. In order to analyze the hail resistant behavior of composite materials, the numerical simulation on the process of hail impacting composite panels were carried out by using finite element analysis software ANSYS/LS-DYNA. The Smooth Particle Hydrodynamic (SPH) approach was used to capture the highly complex and non-linear behavior of the hailstone impacting on a rigid target. Then a validated hail model was introduced in modeling of hailstone impact on composite structures, in which the delamination was also considered using cohesive zone methodology(CZM). Good agreement can be stated between the simulation and experiment. Based on this, the influence of different parameters on the damage of panels were analysed.