The simulation of laminated glass beam impact problem by developing fracture model of spherical DEM

A fracture model suitable to spherical discrete element method (DEM) is presented based on the concept of the cohesive model. In this fracture model, there are three types of interaction between discrete elements, namely connection, cohesion and contact. When fracture criterion is met, the type of interaction between the corresponding discrete elements translates from connection to cohesion. The cohesive traction is obtained from the opening displacement of the elements according to the cohesive model. In order to analyze laminated glass impact problem, the combined DE/FE method is employed, as DEM is suitable to simulate glass while FEM is applicable to model the polyvinyl butyral (PVB) film and impact body. The algorithms of the fracture model are implemented into the in-house developed code, named CDFP. This developed code is applied to simulate the fracture process of automobile laminated glass beam subjected to impact and the results are compared with those obtained by experiment.