• Michael May, Fraunhofer EMI

Composite materials enable lightweight design in high-performance applications due to their excellent weight-specific strength amd stiffness, as well as the high degree of anisotropy.

However, damage and failure of composite materials is rather complex, with many different failure mechanisms (intralaminar and interlaminar) interacting with each other. This becomes even more complex under high rate loading, for example a car crash or a bird impacting an aircraft leading edge.

This minisymposium is intended to foster the exchange amongst researchers interested in modeling the complex response of composite materials under crash and impact loading conditions.

In particular, novel modeling approaches are sought describing the rate-dependent material properties of composite materials. Application of existing methods to large composite structures under crash and impact loading are of interest as well.