Low Velocity Impact Response of Composite/Sandwich Structures

Abstract

Dent resistance of structures is one of the important design parameters to consider in automotive, aerospace, packaging and transportation of fragile goods, civil engineering and marine industries. It is important to study the dynamic impact response of various combinations of skin and core materials which can provide desired fracture toughness and highest strength to weight ratio for such applications. This paper discusses the low velocity impact response of sandwich structures having unique combination of mild steel as skin material bonded to thermoplastics/PU foam as core material. HDPE, LDPE and polypropylene were the choice of thermoplastics and an optimum combination of materials for the sandwich structure was evaluated using drop-weight experimental set up. It is observed that LDPE is the best choice of core material for the sandwich structures considered.