Low Velocity Impact Analysis of Hybrid Composite

Recently, there has been an increasing demand for hybrid composites across various industries, including defense, aerospace, and sports. These composites often experience low velocity impact in their lifetime and undergo interlaminar and intralaminar damages. Therefore, the present work is aimed at numerical investigation of the low velocity impact (LVI) behavior of epoxy-based hybrid laminates reinforced with flax, sisal, carbon fibers. The numerical impact analysis in finite element method-based software ANSYS® is initially simulated and verified for the existing numerical impact analysis given in literature. Several stacking sequences are employed for numerical analysis in ANSYS® to forecast how the above-mentioned hybrid composites will respond and fail under LVI. The impact properties of laminates such as energy absorption, peak reaction force, and damaged area are studied at different energy levels. The results indicate that hybridization of natural and synthetic fibers brings significant changes in mechanical impact properties in hybrid composite than those of natural composites.