A quasi-static crush analysis of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) fuselage section made of woven cglass/epoxy has been conducted using the finite element simulation via ABAQUS. The main material and strength properties of the c-glass/epoxy (200 g/m 2 ) which were needed in the ABAQUS analyses were obtained from standard material characterization tests. A progressive damage methodology using ABAQUS has been employed in order to simulate the non-linear material behaviour of the composite fuselage section. Two stress based failure theories were programmed in the user subroutine code (USDFLD) and linked with ABAQUS in order to predict the damage of the composite materials. Satisfactory level of agreement between simulation and test results were obtained regarding the main crushing characteristics of the tested woven c-glass/epoxy fuselage sections such as peak compressive load, crush energy absorption and the overall crushing response. It has been observed that the predicted peak load are found to agree with the experimentally recorded peak load within an accuracy of 3.44% and 4.09% for Tsai-Hill and Tsai-Wu Failure criterion, respectively. In addition, the simulated crushing energy absorption results show reasonable accuracy with the experimental values. This confirms the accuracy of the progressive damage methodology implemented in FE analysis for the woven glass/epoxy fuselage sections.
[1]
Stephen W. Tsai,et al.
A General Theory of Strength for Anisotropic Materials
,
1971
.
[2]
K E Jackson,et al.
Impact Testing and Simulation of a Crashworthy Composite Fuselage Section with Energy-Absorbing Seats and Dummies
,
2000
.
[3]
K. E. Jackson.
A Comparative Analysis of Three Composite Fuselage Concepts for Crash Performance
,
1996
.
[4]
R. Hill.
A theory of the yielding and plastic flow of anisotropic metals
,
1948,
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A. Mathematical and Physical Sciences.
[5]
L Fasanella Edwin,et al.
Crashworthy Evaluation of a 1/5-Scale Model Composite Fuselage Concept
,
1999
.
[6]
Edwin L. Fasanella,et al.
Innovative Composite Fuselage Design for Improved Crashworthiness
,
1998
.
[7]
Karen E. Jackson.
Analytical Crash Simulation of Three Composite Fuselage Concepts and Experimental Correlation
,
1997
.