Experimental Investigation of the Effect of Internal Damage on Ballistic Resistance of Layered Composites

In this research , for the first time, the effect of important internal damages; such as debonding , internal cracks , interlayer contamination on the ballistic strength of composite layers have been investigated. In this study , undamaged and damaged samples of composite layers are made by wet lay-up method. The results of this assessment showed that the damage caused the ballistic strength of the composite material to decrease. Also , by comparing the results for three internal damages , it was showed that the highest and lowest loss of ballistic resistance is related to debonding damage and interlayer contamination damage, respectively. Also, in this research , tensile analysis of the samples showed that the tensile behavior of all samples was close enough to each other. However , the maximum and minimum effects on tensile behavior of the samples are related to the sample with crack internal and interlayer contamination.