Wave propagation in fibre reinforced composite plate with circular hole under impact loading

Abstract

In this paper, experimental and numerical methods have been applied to the study of composite dynamics. Dynamic orthotropic photoelasticity is employed in the experimental work and the time domain boundary element method for anisotropic media is adopted for the numerical analysis. A fibre reinforced birefringent composite plate is used to model the semi-infinite orthotropic domain with a circular hole. A rifle bullet was used to exert the impact loading with the loading direction parallel and perpendicular to the fibre direction. In the experiments, the propagation, reflection, and diffraction of the stress wave around the hole were recorded and the results were analysed. The time histories of the stress components were obtained from the same experiments and compared with the results from the corresponding computations carried out using the time domain boundary element method. Some valuable data regarding composite dynamics and associated engineering implications were obtained. The comparative study also demonstrates the applicability and accuracy of the two methods for wave propagation problems in orthotropic media.