Failure analysis on octagonal honeycomb sandwich panel under air blast loading

Abstract

In recent days “honeycomb sandwich panels” are widely used against high intensity blast load due to the high energy absorption capability of the honeycomb structure. In this research paper determined the structural behavior of the honeycomb sandwich panel is subjected to the blast loading. Different honeycomb cores like square and octagonal structures are used to determine the minimum deflections for the top and back plates and also maximum energy absorption for the sandwich panel. The honeycomb sandwich panel is consists of the two solid plates (top plate and bottom plate) and one honeycomb core shell type structure. The blast is applied at a constant standoff distance from top plate of the sandwich panel. The sandwich panel is subjected to the blast load using the different masses of explosive charges such as 1 kg, 2 kg and 3 kg of the Trinitrotoluene (TNT) for the explosion in the air, at a constant standoff point distance from the top plate of sandwich panel. The finite element model is performed by ABAQUS software to determine the dynamic response for the sandwich panel. The quarter part of the honeycomb sandwich structure was modeled and imposed symmetry boundary conditions for the honeycomb sandwich panel to minimize the memory storage of the system and reduced the computation time of the analysis. The top and back face deflections of the square honeycomb sandwich panel have been validated with experimental results available in the literature in square honeycomb sandwich panel. There is a possibility of under estimation of the front face and back face deflections for the sandwich panel, if the honey comb structures are not considered an octagonal sandwich panels for different blast loads.