Effects of Aluminum Foam Filling on Compressive Strength and Energy Absorption of Metallic Y-Shape Cored Sandwich Panel

Leilei Yan,Yagang Han,Bin Han,Pengbo Su

doi:10.3390/met10121670

Leilei Yan, Yagang Han + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/met10121670

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Abstract

The design of lightweight sandwich structures with high specific strength and energy absorption capability is valuable for weight sensitive applications. A novel all-metallic foam-filled Y-shape cored sandwich panel was designed and fabricated by using aluminum foam as filling material to prevent core member buckling. Experimental and numerical investigation of out-of-plane compressive loading was carried out on aluminum foam-filled Y-shape sandwich panels to study their compressive properties as well as on empty panels for comparison. The results show that due to aluminum foam filling, the specific structural stiffness, strength, and energy absorption of the Y-shape cored sandwich panel increased noticeably. For the foam-filled panel, aluminum foam can supply sufficient lateral support to the corrugated core and vertical leg of the Y-shaped core and causes a much more complicated deformation mode, which cannot occur in the empty panel. The complicated deformation mode leads to an obvious coupling effect, with the stress–strain curve of the foam-filled panel much higher than those of the empty panel and aluminum foam, which were tested separately. Metallic foam filling is an effective method to increase the specific strength and energy absorption of sandwich structures with lattice cores, making it competitive in load carrying and energy absorption applications.

Highlights

Lightweight sandwich structures with lattice cores [1,2] and foam cores [3,4] have been widely studied and applied due to their outstanding mechanical performance [5,6,7]
Sandwich structures with aluminum foam-filled Y-shape cored sandwich panels are proposed were fabricated in this study
Aluminum foam filling leads to a significant increase in mechanical properties of Y-shape cored sandwich panels, with specific structural stiffness E33 /ρc, normalized compressive stress peak σ33 /(σ y ρc ), and specific energy absorption W m increasing up to 2.68, 5.7, and 20 times that of the empty panel, respectively

Summary

Introduction

Lightweight sandwich structures with lattice cores [1,2] and foam cores [3,4] have been widely studied and applied due to their outstanding mechanical performance [5,6,7]. Lattice cored structures such as pyramidal [8,9], corrugated [10,11], Kagome [12], and honeycomb cores [13,14,15] have advantages in load carrying applications; after the loading force reaches its peak, core member softening occurs and leads to an immediate and dramatic decline of load-carrying capacity [8]. Yan et al [25] designed an all-metallic foam-filled

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