Characterization of short duration stress pulses generated by impacting laminated carbon-fiber/epoxy composites with magnetic flyer plates

Short duration stress pulses are of particular interest in determining the interfacial crack tip instability criteria for the dynamic fracture behavior of laminated carbon-fiber/epoxy composites. However, the heterogeneous architectures of laminated composites can alter the characteristics of a stress pulse as it propagates toward a crack tip. This makes it difficult to use standard dynamic testing techniques for characterizing these materials, since these techniques assume the characteristics of the stress pulse do not change as a result of propagation and can therefore be unambiguously determined from impact conditions. This paper presents a novel experimental technique that has been developed for characterizing short duration stress pulse propagation in laminated composite materials. In this technique, a dynamic moiré interferometer is used to capture fringe patterns corresponding to displacement fields associated with short duration stress pulses that were generated by impacting 0° and 90°/0°/90° carbon-fiber/epoxy composites with a magnetic flyer plate. Appropriate dynamic testing conditions for capturing high fidelity fringe patterns were determined using the recently developed dynamic moiré fringe contrast factor. The effects of the composite architecture on the propagation of short duration stress pulses observed with the dynamic moiré interferometer were confirmed by transient dynamic finite element analysis. From comparisons of experimental and numerical data, it was determined that the impact conditions for the magnetic flyer plate and laminated composite will not necessarily be planar, which has a significant effect on the intensity and duration of the propagating stress pulse.