Impact Damage Management of Composite Laminated Structures by a Probabilistic Approach

A numerical procedure for the design of impact damage resistant composite laminated structures is proposed in the present paper. This procedure, based on probabilistic analyses, is able to support the design of complex composite laminated structures by accounting for the scatter in composite materials' mechanical properties (related to the mutable environmental conditions experienced by an aircraft component during its service life) and by accounting for the uncertainty on accidental impacts locations. A failure criterion, based on the determination of the threshold critical impact energy for impact induced delaminations' onset, is adopted for the evaluation of the damage resistance of composite laminated structures, in the frame of the introduced probabilistic analyses. The proposed procedure has been implemented into a commercial FEM platform and composite panels have been used as numerical benchmarks to investigate the influence of the combined material properties and impact location uncertainties on composite laminated structures' impact damage resistance. A further comparison between two different stiffened composite panels designs have been introduced to highlight the added value of the proposed impact damage resistance probabilistic approach in terms of safety and effectiveness, with respect to the standard deterministic tools.