LAUSR

Abstract Fiber metal laminates (FMLs) are new hybrid materials which are widely used in aircraft industry due to their higher mechanical properties compared to monolithic metal and epoxy based composites. In this work, mechanical behavior of the FML is investigated by experiment and simulation. The FML used in this study is made of two layers of aluminum 2024 and a layer of glass-fiber reinforced epoxy (GFRE). The experiments showed nonlinear elastic behavior for GFRE layer. This behavior is due to damage evolution and material degradation. Therefore, a simple nonlinear damage is presented to improve the results of the proposed material model. Mechanical properties of the layers are measured by uniaxial tensile test. Numerical simulations are performed by implementing the material model into the user subroutine of MSC MARC FE code. The results of the proposed model showed a reasonable agreement with the experiments. The agreement confirms the nonlinear damage behavior of the FMLs observed in the experiments.