Angle-ply carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) crush tubes were tested in drop weight impact experiments.
High-fidelity computational modelling of the dynamic impact response was performed using explicit finite
element analysis in LS-DYNA. Ply-by-ply and fibre-aligned meshing was used for the composite lamina wherein
the intralaminar damage was treated with a 3D rate- and pressure-dependent continuum damage mechanics
(CDM) model, implemented as a user material. Delamination was modelled using cohesive tiebreak contacts to
deal with the mis-matched nodes caused by the use of a structured, fibre-aligned mesh. The material aligned
meshing scheme was shown to be required to capture the intralaminar splits observed in the ±45◦ plies.
The numerical predictions showed excellent correlation with experimental measurements in terms of both the
damage mechanisms and macroscopic material behaviour of the drop weight. In the simulation, interlaminar
friction between delaminated plies seemed to be a main contributor of energy dissipation. Parameter sensitivity
analysis showed that the interaction between the delamination fracture energy and friction can substantially
influence the results and stable crushing load, in particular. For the scenario studied here, a regular structured
mesh (unaligned) was shown to be insufficient for simulating realistic crack paths despite producing reasonable
predictions of the force–displacement and absorbed energy.