LOW-VELOCITY IMPACT RESPONSE OF COMPOSITE CORRUGATED CORE SANDWICH PANELS: EFFECT OF IMPACTOR GEOMETRY

摘要

Fibre reinforced polymer composite sandwich structures are exceedingly using for engineering applications requiring low-weight, high strength/stiffness, and protection from collision events. In this study, an experimental program was conducted to investigate the influence of the impactor shapes on the impact behaviour and failure mechanisms of the trapezoidal composite corrugated core sandwich structures under the low-velocity impact. The composite sandwich panels were fabricated by using woven E-glass fibre reinforced epoxy composite. The experiments were carried out employing drop-weight test machine with four different shaped steel impactor heads, i.e., flat, large and small hemispherical, and conical at 23J of kinetic energy. The results revealed that the impact behaviour of the composite corrugated sandwich significantly influenced by the impactor head. The de-bonding damage mode of the upper skin and the corrugated core dominated with different impactor heads. The flat impactor head has caused external damage mode on the upper face sheet, while core failure mode and fibre break at impacted area hasve caused by small hemispherical and conical impactor heads, respectively.