Advanced composite structures offer many advantages compared to the conventional materials, especially where high strength and stiffness to weight ratio is concerned. Thus, composites have been used widely in many applications such as aerospace, sport equipment, pressure vessels and automotive parts. A constant concern is the effect of foreign object impacts on composite structures because significant damage can occur and yet be undetectable by visual iection. Such impacts can range from the most ordinary at low velocity - a tool dropped on a product - to the hypervelocity impact of space debris on a spacecraft. Such impacts can reasonably be expected during the life of the structure and can result in internal damage that is often difficult to detect and can cause severe reductions in the residual strength and stability of the structure. Even though composite materials are often used in applications where they are subjected to bending, the residual flexural strength and the effect of the stiffness of the fixture in absorbing impact energy has received relatively little attention. In this thesis the residual flexural strength of composite plate after low velocity impact with rigid and nonrigid fixtures has been investigated. To decrease the damage initiation in impact 5 types of rubbers with different stiffness has been used in fixtures. A model for prediction of low velocity impact damage in hand layup composite plate and residual flexural strength after impact was developed. The projectile had spherical head and 600 gr weight and drop at 1m height. The E-glass polyester composite plate is made of two layers of chopped strand mat and one woven layer. The conventional finite element method of simulating 3 layers composites almost are complex and time consuming. As the failure mod of delamination doesn’t observed in tests, to decrease the calculation cost, homogenous orthotropic model has been proposed to use in this special case just for engineering application. Simulation of the problem has been done in the finite element software ABAQUS/Explicit and in order to investigate damage initiation, the four failure criteria of maximum stress, maximum strain, Hashin and Hou have been compared with each other. In addition to these failure criteria, which are simple and well known, Comanho sudden damage evolution law has been used. For modeling of the damage evolution and defining orthotropic material behavior, user subroutine VUMAT has been used. Experimental tests have been performed to validate numerical results and simulation with related tests have been done for same conditions as simulations. By comparing the results of simulation and experiment, it was concluded that there is a good agreement between the result of simulating with Hou and maximum stress failure criteria and the tests of bending after impact for rigid fixtures and rubber fixtures. By using a rubber with stiffness of 1096 N/mm the residual bending strength has been increased 27% compare to the rigid fixture. All the failure criteria predict same modes of failure. The average error of simulations was 22% so this approach doesn’t recommend for scientific applications. Keywords Hand lay-up, low velocity impact, residual bending strength, FEM, VUMAT, experiment, rubber, energy absorber