Analysis of Fragment Distributions from Carbon-Fiber-Reinforced Composite Panels Subjected to Hypervelocity Impacts

In the last decades, carbon-fiber-reinforced composite plates (CFRPs) have been widely employed for various structural applications on board spacecraft. Compared to metals, CFRPs present different mechanical properties related to the anisotropy of the fibers; this can strongly influence the response of CFRPs to hypervelocity impacts. In this work, four impact experiments performed on thin panels of CFRPs are presented to assess the influence of the impact velocity and of the impactor size on the fragmentation process; experimental data include fragment cumulative size and shape distributions. It is shown that size distributions strongly differ from aluminum plates in terms of the total number and shape. Significant differences are also shown on the shape distributions, which are mostly related to the presence of needle-shaped fragments.