Numerical Investigation of the Effects of Material and Number of Metal Layers on Low-Velocity Impact Response of Metal Laminates

In this paper, the mechanical behavior of multi-layer metal laminates was investigated under the low velocity impact loading using Ls-Dyna finite element code. The effects of material and number of the metal layers on the impact outputs including the contact force, the contact duration, the transverse displacement and the dissipated energy were studied. At the first step, the number of metal layers was set to be two layers and the effect of using different metal materials including Aluminum 6061-T6, steel, lead and Aluminum 6061 in the defined layers was investigated. At the second step, the material of the metal layers was fixed and the effect of changing the number of metal layers from one to six in a constant whole thickness was studied. The yield stress and the Young’s modulus were the most influencing material parameters on the mechanical behavior of metal laminates. The contact force was decreased while the contact duration and the transverse displacement increased by increasing the number of metal layers in a whole constant thickness. The results of the current finite element modeling were validated against the literature and the experimental investigations.