Crash safety design: Basic principles of impact numerical simulations for composite materials

Along with the steady evolution of the automotive industry, the concern for developing crash-safety technologies has always been one of the major concerns within the design of a vehicle. The understanding of the response of materials to impact is a traditional but ongoing subject of investigation worldwide, powered by the challenges imposed by novel and progressively complex materials such as fiber reinforced composite plastics, with the intrinsic failure mechanisms characteristic of the combination among each matrix and reinforcement selected. Acknowledging the current importance of numerical simulations in this study, the present work aims at providing a brief summary of basic notions for which regards impact explicit numerical simulations on composite materials, particularly considering two-dimensional 'shell' finite elements.