Fiber-reinforced composite panels have become the primary load-bearing structures in aircraft due to their exceptional stiffness, specific strength, and mechanical properties. Owing to the high cost of experimental testing, numerical simulation is considered an effective method for rapidly modeling impact behavior and predicting complex internal failure mechanisms within composites. This study utilizes a combined approach of finite element simulation and experimental research to explore the low-velocity blunt-body impact behavior of composite laminates (CLs). The simulated peak impact force and pulse width demonstrated errors within 5.83% and 4.95% of the experimental results, respectively. This study provides effective support for investigations into the low-velocity blunt-body impact performance of CLs.

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is now essential for certifying many composite primary structures as it resolves strain redistribution at the moment of impact. Traditional detection methods, including resistive strain gauges, face challenges due to susceptibility to electromagnetic noise, as well as increased mass and wiring complexity proportional to the number of channels. This study proposes an impact strain monitoring and simulating method using optical fiber sensors for composite skin panels. Repeated low-velocity impact tests were conducted on large-size composite skin panels using various impact forces and locations. The 95% confidence interval for unit load strain in the simulation results differs from the experiment by 18%. This method effectively facilitates the monitoring of global impact strain on large-size composite skin panels.

Modern aerospace vehicles operate under complex multiaxial dynamic environments throughout service, including multidirectional coupled shock, random vibration, harmonic vibration, and aeroelastic excitation. While conventional sequential uniaxial testing facilitates engineering implementation, it cannot replicate the spatial coherence, phase relationships, and nonlinear coupling effects of operational environments. This issue may bias the evaluation of structural response, fatigue damage, and onboard equipment functional degradation. This review summarizes recent advances in multiaxial shock/vibration environment simulation and damage evaluation for aerospace vehicles. It covers multiaxial load source classification, transmission paths and coupling mechanisms, dynamic response analysis, shock- and vibration-induced damage models, and updated experimental testing technologies. This work further identifies unresolved challenges in load-spectrum measurement, spectral-matrix reproduction, nonlinear path recognition, and coupled shock–vibration damage assessment. Future research directions are proposed, including multiaxial service-environment database construction, unified response and damage equivalence criteria, and integrated evaluation frameworks for structural, equipment and functional performance. This review provides technical references for the environmental design, structural qualification and reliability assessment of aerospace systems.

Composite aircraft structures inevitably sustain low-velocity blunt-body impacts, resulting in internal damage that is difficult to detect. Existing research primarily focuses on damage analysis of aircraft panel structures under ideal boundary conditions, which do not fully correspond to the actual boundaries of panel structures. This study examines the AC531/CCF800H carbon fiber epoxy resin-based composite skin panel and introduces a design methodology for the elastic support boundary of large curved composite aircraft skin panels. Elastic-support boundary: K H = 435 KN/m, K θ = 280 KN*m/rad reproduces the measured stress error within 10.44% and displacement error within 8.18%. Peak impact force rises linearly with energy (F _peak = 1.464 E + 52,406 N, R ² = 0.997) and drops 26% when the angle increases from 0° to 40°. This study delivers a predictive tool that directly supports damage-tolerance compliance for future composite fuselages exposed to ground-handling operations.