An impact loading simulation of rubber toughened polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) using abaqus explicit

Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) is a glass replacement product due to lightweight, transparent thermoplastic and better impact resistance. Despite the advantages, it is brittle or has low ductility. During crashes, impact load can produce the fragmentation of small glass which is hazardous to person. Thus, the improved PMMA incorporates rubber nano-particles in the PMMA matrix called rubber toughened PMMA (RT-PMMA) was introduced. Rubber particles affect the toughening mechanism in energy dissipation during the initial crack and hence it’s improve the ductility of the PMMA. However, limited number of research for numerical simulation studies for RT-PMMA under impact loading were conducted. Thus, this study aims to visualise and validate the impact properties for RT-PMMA 45, RT-PMMA 65 and RT-PMMA 100 under different impact velocity by numerical simulation approach. This study was conducted using The Extended Drucker-Prager and Ductile Damage Model in Abaqus Explicit 2021 software. The impact visualisation was then validated qualitatively with the experimental from published manuscript. From the results, it was found that the highest content of rubber particle fraction has better ductility and the lower the Von Mises stress in the material during impact. The higher the impact velocity, the greater the stress propagation. The outcome of this study is to identify the simulation damage model to simulate the impact on RT-PMMA thus it is able to reduce experiment research costs for other grades of RT-PMMA and impact velocities.