Abstract
Sandwich structural components made of composite materials are used in a wide range of everyday applications in industries (aerospace, automotive, transportation, defense, etc.). These components can be used as energy-absorbing devices, which drives many researchers to study experimentally and numerically the crashworthiness of these materials. The use of sandwich composite structures to obtain crashworthiness is just emerging, and the investigation of new materials in energy absorption is still in review. This chapter deals with different dissipation energy mechanisms observed during a crush and their applications. In the first part, we introduce the common metrics used in crashworthiness studies to measure the energy dissipation capabilities. In many studies, the specific energy absorption (SEA) is considered to be the essential parameter, as it is expressed per unit of mass and then is dimensionless. The second part presents the different damages observed during a crushing, and details are given to link them to the efficiency of energy absorption. The two main experimental setups used in crashworthiness studies are axial compression and three-point bending, and each configuration exhibits different crushing modes that depend on the foam used, geometry and faceplate materials. The third and fourth parts show that the crushing mode and the SEA are controlled mainly by the nature of the foam used and, specifically, its shear modulus value. In some applications, using faceplates tufted together throughout the entire sandwich improves significantly the energy absorption of composite sandwich materials. The results of in situ experiments are presented in the fifth part. Finally, applications in the marine industry are presented. In this part, it is shown that natural cores are pertinent candidates as they offer as good strength yielding as high-density PVC. Among trending cores, balsa wood is crashworthy with a good strength-to-weight ratio (density 90 km/m3).
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