Impact damage in hybrid braided twill composites

Impact damage to composite plates is significantly reduced by replacing some of the high-strength fibres with more ductile glass or synthetic fibres. Hybrid composites reduce impact damage by distributing more widely the deformations and strain in the contact region. This investigation focussed only on hybrid textile composites with individual tows composed of either carbon or glass which are braided together in a twill textile. At a similar level of impact energy, low and high-speed impact tests resulted in different failure mechanisms dominated, respectively, by quasi-static and flexural wave deformations. The damage severity was evaluated in terms of damage area (C-scan) and absorbed energy