Dynamic behavior of aluminum honeycomb sandwich panels under air blast: Experiment and numerical analysis

Abstract This paper presents a blast experiment to investigate the blast-resistance of square sandwich panels with hexagon aluminum honeycomb cores. Different heights and cell side length s for honeycomb core were considered in the experiment. The impulse loading on the panel was calculated by using the displacement history of ballistic pendulum. The interaction between the shockwave and panel, as well as the deformation/failure modes of face sheet and core, were discussed. Finite-element simulation was also conducted to investigate the dynamic response of the sandwich panel. The simulation captured most of the details of the deformation patterns. The velocity, displacement, strain history and energy absorption of the sandwich panel was analyzed.