Original Research Article Fracture of laminated woven GFRP composite pressure vessels under combined low-velocity impact and internal pressure Shokrollah Sharifi a, * , Soheil Gohari b , Masoumeh Sharifiteshnizi a , Reza Alebrahim c , Colin Burvill b , Yazid Yahya d , Zora Vrcelj a a College of Engineering and Science, Victoria University, Melbourne, VIC 8001, Australia b Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia c High Performance Cloud Computing Centre, Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Seri Iskandar, Perak, Malaysia d Centre for Composites, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Skudai, 81310 Johor, Malaysia 1. Introduction Fiber-reinforced polymers are increasingly used in many engineering fields such as aerospace, transportation, sports, and manufacture body armors and helmets. Thus, under- standing their impact behavior is crucial in order to assess their reliability [1]. Numerous studies have been reported on impact behavior of flat composite laminates while composite laminates with curved geometries have been disregarded [2]. a r c h i v e s o f c i v i l a n d m e c h a n i c a l e n g i n e e r i n g 1 8 ( 2 0 1 8 ) 1 7 1 5 – 1 7 2 8 a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 1 March 2018 Accepted 17 July 2018 Available online Keywords: Composite pressure vessels Woven GFRP laminates Low velocity impact and internal pressure FE simulation Experimental study a b s t r a c t Dome curvatures of pressure vessels often sustain highest level of stresses when subjected to various loading conditions. This research is aimed at investigating the effect of dome geomet- rical shape (hemispherical, torispherical, and ellipsoidal domes) on mechanical deformation and crack length of laminated woven reinforced polymer (GRP) composite pressure vessels under low-velocity impact (LVI) (case one) or combination of LVI and internal pressure (case two). The study is based on finite element (FE) simulations with laboratory-based experimental validation studies. It was observed that the maximum vertical displacements (U Ã 1 ) and crack length along the diameter of deformation (a) are both of lower magnitude in case one. Damage intensity and fracture differ for different combinations of loading. Only matrix breakage and debonding occurs in case one and fiber breakage occurs in case two. The dome geometric shapes used in this study were found to be invariant to both damage intensity and failure modes. Irrespective of the type of load applied, the magnitude of U Ã 1 and crack length correlate with dome geometric shape as the maximum and the minimum U Ã 1 occur in torispherical and hemispherical domes, respectively. The maximum and the minimum crack lengths also take place in torispherical and hemispherical domes, respectively. © 2018 Politechnika Wrocławska. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: sharifi.te@gmail.com (S. Sharifi), soheil.gohari@unimelb.edu.au (S. Gohari), colb@unimelb.edu.au (C. Burvill). Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/acme https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acme.2018.07.006 1644-9665/© 2018 Politechnika Wrocławska. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.