Studying the impact resistance of thick-section composite plates under multiple impacts loadingis of great interest to composite vehicle applications. Recently, a unique high-energy lowvelocityimpact (HE-LVI) test capability, known as ‘Tower of Power (ToP),' has been jointlydeveloped by ARL and UD-CCM. This study focuses on using a three dimensional finiteelement model to simulate the impact experiments conducted on thick-section plain-weave (PW)S-2 Glass/SC15 composite plates of nominal dimensions 711-mm × 711-mm × 28-mm thicksubjected to four sequential high-energy low-velocity impacts using the ToP. A rate dependentprogressive composite damage model MAT162 in LS-DYNA is used to model damage initiationand growth as a function of number of impacts. The effect of boundary conditions on the impactcontact force and plate deformation is quantified by simulating both simply-supported andclamped boundary conditions. The diameter, tip radius, and mass of the impact head were 76.2-mm, 80-mm, & 515.74-kg, respectively. An impact velocity of 5.47-m/s provides about 7.72-kJof impact energy which was kept constant for all impact scenarios. A support and cover platewere also integral to the finite element model providing a 610-mm × 610-mm impact window.This impact window was divided into four equal quadrants, the center of each quadrantidentified, and impact locations were chosen on the quad-centers and on the diagonalsconnecting the quad-centers. Each impact event has an approximate duration of 30-ms, and thusfour sequential impacts are simulated over a total time of 120-ms. Detailed simulations andcorrelation with experimental results will be presented.
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