Experimental and numerical analysis of a laminated basalt composite plate subjected to blast load

The use of the advanced laminated composites is become more important in the structures of many engineering applications such as space stations, aerospace vehicles, automotives and marine structures. Also, with the increasing use of recent composite material structures in the military applications, nonlinear dynamic analysis of these materials subjected to blast loads resulting from fuel and nuclear explosions, and the rush of sonic boom are becoming increasingly more significant. The nonlinear dynamic response of a blast loaded laminated basalt composite plate has been investigated experimentally and numerically. The laminated basalt composite plate is fully-clamped at all edges. For numerical analyses, the equations of motion for the plate are derived by the use of the virtual work principle. Approximate solutions are assumed for the space domain and substituted into the equations of motion. Then the Galerkin Method is used to obtain the nonlinear differential equations in the time domain. The Newmark Method is applied to solve the system of coupled nonlinear equations by writing a computer code in MATLAB. On the experimental side of the study, tests have been carried out on the laminated basalt composite plates, in sixteen layers of stacking sequences and obtained by infusion, with fully-clamped edges for blast loads. The approximate-numerical and ANSYS results are compared with the experimental ones. We have obtained a good agreement for the specific points.