Abstract: A reliable computational procedur e was established for simulating the laminate fa ilure. Employing ast rain-based failur e criterion, it was modif ied from H ashin failur e cr iterion as well as the concept of progressive stiffness degr adation to model the intr alaminar failure. An appr oach to predict the initiation and propagation of interlaminar damage ( delamination) is brought forwar d based on the contact constr aint introduced by the penalty functionmet hod: a scalar damage variable is intr oduced and the degradation of the interface st iffness is established and adamage sur face which combines st ress-based and f racture-mechanics-based failure cr iter ia is set up to derive the damage evolut ion law. Both the intr alaminar and int erlaminar models are implement ed into a commercial finit e elementcode, ABAQUS/ Explicit, via it s user subroutines respectively. Numer ical prediction is carr ied out on carbon-epoxylaminate plates due to tr ansver sely low velocit y impact. Good agr eement between exper imental results and numericalresults is obtained.