ON THE MECHANICAL-BEHAVIOR OF PULTRUDED SECTIONS SUBMITTED TO LOW-VELOCITY IMPACT

An experimental investigation has been carried out to study the dynami c behaviour of composite profiles made by pultrusion. Two different ty pes of glass/polyester pultruded beams were subjected to low-velocity impact loading with several incident kinetic energy ranges. The result ing data from the drop-weight tests provide specific information about rite effect of the impactor velocity, the impactor mass and the impac tor nose radius, all of which have a great influence on the impact res ponse of these profiles. A big-impactor (BI) strike produces less dela mination than a small-impactor (SI) one. it appears that damage locali sation has a great influence on the mechanical response of these profi les. An experimental study of the sequence of damage mechanisms during impact loading is also carried out. A methodology based on combined a ccelerometer/strain-gauge signal analysis is performed to identify the damage sequence which occurs over the impact duration. The post-impac t vibration has a notable influence on the internal damage growth (cra cking and delamination). The proposed damage sequence is strongly supp orted by an experimental deductive method. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science L td. All rights reserved.