The blast response of novel thermoplastic-based fibre-metal laminates – some preliminary results and observations

This paper investigates the blast response of fibre-metal laminates (FMLs) manufactured from two glass fibre reinforced polypropylene composites and that of a plain aluminium alloy. The FMLs were manufactured by stacking the materials in a mould and applying heat and pressure to them. An autoclave was not used. In this work, attention focuses on elucidating the failure modes in the hybrid laminates. The blast data is non-dimensionalised to develop an empirical formula that characterises the behaviour of these materials under this extreme form of loading. The results indicate that thermoplastic-based FML materials may show potential for use in blast-resistant structures, due to their ability to absorb blast energy through delamination, debonding between the aluminium and composite layers, spalling/petalling of the aluminium, perforation through the layers and bending and stretching of the glass fibres. The tests also highlight the difference in response between panels constructed using woven (symmetrical response) and unidirectional (asymmetric behaviour) GFPP composites. The non-dimensional analysis appears to show that there is correlation between the response of all three panel types.