Low-Velocity Flexural Impact Analyses of Functionally Graded Sandwich Beams Using Finite Element Modeling

Abstract

A comparative numerical investigation on low-velocity impact response of a metal/ ceramic functionally graded sandwich beam (FGSB) is performed by the commercial finite element (FE) software, LS-DYNA[Formula: see text]. The mechanical properties of the FG core are represented by a power-law depending on the volume fractions of the constituents. The effective elastic properties and elastoplastic behavior of the FG core are defined by Mori–Tanaka method and TTO (Tamura–Tomota–Ozawa) model, respectively. The effects of number of layers, compositional gradient, impact energy, and impact side are investigated. The simulation results indicated that both number of layers and compositional gradient have almost no effect on the kinetic energy history. In other respects, the compositional gradient exhibits a considerable effect, and the number of layers has a minor effect on the contact force history. Increasing impact energy does not have a considerable effect in terms of number of layers whereas it exhibits a significant effect in terms of compositional gradient on the percentage difference between the peak contact forces. Finally, the impact side does not influence the contact force history for all number of layers and compositional gradients.