Modelling and assessing impact damage for a new generation of zero-emissions maritime vessels

This paper presents a study of the impact resistance of different composite structures which have been proposed for a new generation of zero-emissions composite maritime vessels. A mixture of flat plate specimens, eFoil leading edge models and full-scale vessel hull models were simulated in this work. These representative models are further divided into high-fidelity models (i.e. mesoscale level of analysis) and global-local finite element (FE) models of the entire structure. Impact conditions were defined based on typical loading expected during the vessels operating life. For example, the leading edge was impacted by sea ice while the hull was impacted by rigid debris. A robust intralaminar damage model was used to capture damage modes such as matrix cracking while cohesive surfaces were used to model ply-to-ply contact and capture delamination.

Results have shown that the leading edge can successfully resist an ice impact with negligible predicted interlaminar delamination when compared with a rigid body impact. The use of a global-local modelling approach (a mixture of shell and solid elements and shell-solid coupling) can produce similar damage in local and global representations of the eFoil structure. Results have also shown that, when a projectile strikes the hull, interlaminar delamination was negligible.