Title: The impulsive response of aluminium foam core sandwich structures

Authors: Feng Zhu, Zhihua Wang, Guoxing Lu, Dong Ruan

Addresses: Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, John Street, Hawthorn, VIC 3122, Australia. ' Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, John Street, Hawthorn, VIC 3122, Australia; Institute of Applied Mechanics and Biomedical Engineering, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, P.R. China. ' Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, John Street, Hawthorn, VIC 3122, Australia; School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, 639798, Singapore. ' Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, John Street, Hawthorn, VIC 3122, Australia

Abstract: This paper presents an experimental and theoretical investigation into the structural response and energy absorbing capacity of the novel light weight sandwich panels with an aluminium core under impulsive loading. The experimental results are presented in terms of deformation/failure patterns observed and quantitative data, which were obtained from the tests by means of a ballistic pendulum with corresponding sensors; including deflection-time history of an arbitrary position of the back face, pressure-time history at the centre of the front face, and impulse transfer. In analytical modelling, the deformation process is divided into three phases, corresponding to the front face deformation, core crushing and overall structural bending, respectively. The cellular core is idealised as a rigid-perfectly-plastic-locking material, and the structure is assumed to satisfy Johansen yield criterion. A procedure of moment of momentum conservation is adopted to describe the movement of the plastic hinge lines. Finally, a parametric study has been carried out to investigate the energy absorption performance of sandwich panels.

Keywords: sandwich structures; impulsive loading; analytical model; structural response; energy absorption; lightweight sandwich panels; aluminium foam core; deformation patterns; failure patterns; plastic hinge lines.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMATEI.2009.029361

International Journal of Materials Engineering Innovation, 2009 Vol.1 No.2, pp.133 - 153

Published online: 23 Nov 2009 *

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