Numerical study of lightweight sandwich panels under explosion using rigid polyurethane foam and vulcanized rubber

Abstract

AbstractStructural weight reduction is one of the main design objectives in structural engineering.Various concepts have been proposed to reduce weight of military tunnels protecting layers andarmored doors. Among them, application of sandwich sheets which comprise of two face sheetsand low-density core materials which offers a significant weight reduction, high resistance againstblast loads, and the ability to withstand repetitive blast loa ds.In this paper, numerical investigations were conducted using 3D nonlinear finite elementsimulations with commercial ANSYS AUTODYN software. A number of peripherally simplysupported (from all sides) nonmetallic core sandwich panels with either rigid p olyurethane foam(RPF) or vulcanized rubber (VR) cores were studied. A parametric study was carried out to studythe behavior of these types of sandwich panels against blast load. Different thickness for differentcore materials were tested namely 5, 10, 15, and 20 cm. Sandwich Panels were subjected todifferent blast charges of 1, 5 and 10 kg TNT at fixed standoff distance 1 meter.It was concluded that the behavior of high density RPF sandwich panel is better than that ofVR sandwich panel. Using rigid polyurethane foam instead of vulcanized rubber as a core materialdecreases the maximum displacement by an average value 48.67 %, for the three different blastloads, which is good displacement reduction.