Abstract
Carbon fiber/epoxy composites are typical brittle materials and have low impact properties. Recently, it is important to investigate impact characteristics of carbon fiber composites because of increasing use as automobile parts and high pressure hydrogen vessels of fuel cell electric vehicles for light weight. In this study, the low velocity impact properties of carbon fiber/epoxy composites fabricated by a filament winding method are studied. The low velocity impact properties were measured by performing tests according to ASTM D7136. The low velocity impact simulations were carried out using commercial structural analysis software, Abaqus. The absorbed energy and the delamination shapes were compared between the experimental and simulation results. The numerical analysis method showed that the absorbed energy decreased with the reduced number of cohesive elements in the composite models.