Analysis of the Crushing Behavior of Flat Composite Plates Produced by Sheet Molding Compound

SMC composites, comprising chopped fiber bundles within a matrix material, offer the potential to create lightweight structures with high strength and stiffness, serving as viable substitutes for heavier metal components. The complex task of designing SMC composites with optimized performance characteristics is compounded by their inherently localized anisotropic behavior and the presence of various interacting forms of damage. Consequently, simulating the performance of SMC in crash-worthy applications necessitates a comprehensive characterization of the material’s mechanical properties through tailored experimental tests. In this study, an experimental study has been conducted on a commercial SMC mate- rial, with the primary objective of comprehensively comprehending its behavior and deriving specific parameters essential for numerical simulations. Employing ESI-VPS, the crashworthiness of flat components was simulated and successfully achieved a favorable correlation between the obtained results and the experimental data.