Damage Analysis of Honeycomb Core Composite Sandwich Plate Subjected Low Velocity Impact

Abstract

A systematic study on the impact process and damage characteristics of honeycomb core composite sandwich plates were completed on the basis of the ex-study on laminated composite plates. A series of quasi-static transverse indentation tests of composite sandwich plates are carried out to study the contact law of honeycomb core sandwich composites. An analysis program of the transient dynamic finite element analysis was developed to calculate the impact characteristics of the impactor and the composite sandwich plate, and to predict the damage to the composite sandwich plate during the low velocity impacts process. For estimating the occurrence and the extension of the damage to the composite sandwich plate subjected impact, an impact damage model of the honeycomb core composite sandwich plates was set up and applied in the program. This model consisted of the damage occurring criterion and the damage extension criterion. A simplified criterion of the damage to honeycomb core was proposed in this paper. The results of numerical calculation showed that the impact energy had significant effect on the impact contact face and the damage process of sandwich plates, and the impact characteristics of composite sandwich plate were different from laminated composite plate. Finally, a series of standard low velocity tests on honeycomb core composite sandwich plates were carried out to demonstrate the analysis results. The comparison between both showed that the predictions agree with the test data fairly well.