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The structural properties of braided composite laminates are significantly affected by the low‐velocity impact (LVI). In this paper, the impact resistance and damage tolerance of triaxial braid structure laminates at different positions were mainly studied. Three hybrid biaxial (B)/triaxial (T) braided composite structures of BBTT, BTTB, and TTBB were designed, and LVI test and post‐impact compression tests were carried out. The results show that the triaxial braided fabric with quasi‐isotropic on the impact side caused more significant matrix cracks along the axis yarn direction, and the matrix damage area and delamination area were larger. For triaxial braided ply with high curl levels, severe fiber fracture and relatively concentrated damage occurred first on the non‐impact side. Interestingly, triaxial braided fabrics exhibited better impact resistance in terms of mechanical response when distributed across the specimen surface. However, a global damage pattern appears at high energy levels, which seriously reduced the residual strength of the structure and showed the worst damage tolerance. The damage quantification analysis of cracks, dent depths, delamination and residual compressive strength caused by the LVI of hybrid shaft number braided laminates was carried out in this work, which provided a valuable reference for engineering failure analysis and rational structure optimization of composite laminates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Advantages of asymmetric hybridization on impact resistance and resilience. • Rules of external damage area and internal crack volume distribution. • Damage mechanism of carbon/Kevlar hybridization laminates. The ply structure has a significant effect on the impact resistance and failure behavior of composite laminates. In this paper, carbon/Kevlar hybrid fabric reinforcements were prepared with different Kevlar ratio (0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%) by replacing carbon fabric plies on the non-impact side by Kevlar plies. The low-velocity impact tests for all configurations were carried out under 15 J and 25 J energy respectively. The results show that the maximum deflection, impact duration, impact absorption energy and absorption energy efficiency of hybrid laminates increased with the Kevlar hybrid ratio, whereas the peak force presented a decreasing trend, which indicates that the adding of Kevlar layer makes the laminates more ductile than non-hybrid carbon structure. The damage mechanism of the carbon fiber ply was brittle fiber fracture, resin cracking and resin shedding, while the fibers pull-out and tows splitting was found in Kevlar ply. The critical structural damages start from the non-impact side and evolve to the impact side. And the rules of internal crack volume distribution with Kevlar plies are consistent with the trend of external damage area on the non-impact side. It is suggested that in order to take into account the peak strength and excellent structural resilience, Kevlar asymmetric-hybrid ratio of 25% is the most appropriate. The reason is that an appropriate small ratio of Kevlar cushion ply can not only effectively avoid the tensile fracture at non-impact side happened in the non-hybrid carbon structure, but also withstand enough impact load by maintaining a high carbon fiber content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Advantages of symmetric intercalation hybridization on impact strength and resilience. • Correlation of apparent damage area index and internal damage volume data. • Damage mechanism of symmetric and asymmetric carbon/Kevlar structures. Hybrid fiber composite laminates with the same materials, manufacturing methods and molding processes may present different mechanical behaviors. In this paper, the effect of intercalation sequence on the mechanical performance of carbon/Kevlar plain laminates were studied. According to different intercalation methods, the hybrid layout was divided into symmetric and asymmetric configurations. It is found that the symmetric intercalation structures (KCCK and CKKC) possess better load-bearing and resilience capacity compared with asymmetric structures (CCKK and CKCK), even better than pure carbon structure (CCCC) under high energy impact. The impact damage volume of symmetric specimens was significantly smaller than that of asymmetric specimens by quantitative micro-CT analysis. The apparent damage index (d f and d r) can be used to estimate the internal damage data (d CT , H and V). KCCK, a typical symmetric sandwich-like structure, presented the most slight damage among all symmetric and asymmetric configurations, with shear cracks observed at the brittle carbon fiber core layers, while the delamination cracks between Kevlar-carbon interlayers were away from the central damaged region. In CKCK, interlaminar cracks were formed at each carbon-Kevlar interlayers, which shared and relieved the primary interlaminar crack at the core layers compared with CCKK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]