Investigation of normal, lateral, and oblique impact of microscale projectiles into unidirectional glass/epoxy composites

Spacesuits and spacecraft must endure high velocity impacts from micrometeoroids. This work considers the impact of 100 μm diameter projectiles into composite targets at velocities from 0.5 km/s to 2 km/s. This work begins by presenting an energy-based theoretical model relating depth of penetration (DoP) and impact force to impact velocity, characteristic time, and threshold velocity and force. Next, this work compares numerical simulations of normal impact on composites to the theoretical model. Numerical simulations are conducted with LS-DYNA and the well-known composite model, MAT-162. The numerical models consider unidirectional S2-glass fiber reinforced SC-15 epoxy composite laminates. The numerical model shows good correlation with the theoretical model. The numerical model also investigates lateral impact, parallel to the fiber direction, and oblique impact at angles from 30° to 82.5°. This work decomposes oblique impact into normal and lateral components, and compares them with normal and lateral impact results. The results show good correlation of the normal component of oblique results with the theoretical model. This numerical and theoretical study focuses on DoP, velocity, and penetration resistance force as functions of time. The theoretical model and numerical simulations are used to determine new DoP parameters: characteristic time of depth of penetration and threshold impact velocity. These models are a first step in developing the capability to predict DoP for oblique, microscale, high-speed impact on composite materials.