INVESTIGATION OF INFLUENCE OF LAYUP CONFIGURATION ON BALLISTIC RESISTANCE OF GLASS FIBRE REINFORCED POLYMER (GFRP) USING FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS

Abstract

This study is aimed primarily to investigate the influence of layup configuration on ballistic resistance of glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) using finite element analysis (FEA). Although, numerical simulation has been used to improve on the ballistic resistance of composite materials for combat helmet applications. However, not many FEA works have considered linear static analysis of different layup configurations of GFRP composites ballistic resistance for combat helmet. Four different layup configurations Θ_1, Θ_2, Θ_3 and Θ_4 of Glass Fibre Reinforced Plastic laminate for combat helmet were investigated in this study. The FEA result showed that all the tested configurations based on NIJ-0106.01 standard using 9 mm, 8g Full Metal Jacket (FMJ) bullet at a velocity of 358 m/s ±15 were well within the failure surface of the failure criterion. The ply failure indices of 0.1520, 0.1510,0.1480 and 0.137 for Θ_1, Θ_2, Θ_3 and Θ_4 respectively were quite within the failure envelope. Hence, they are failure safe most especially within the test region. In addition, numerical simulation showed that Θ_3 has better ballistic resistance among the lot.

Keywords

• ballistic resistance
• brain traumatic injury (bti)
• combat helmet
• fea
• gfrp
• layup configuration