Damage behavior of honeycomb sandwich structure under low-energy impact

Honeycomb sandwich structure is widely used in aircrafts and ships to absorb impact energy. Damage caused by low-energy impact is difficult to investigate, but will significantly reduce the strength of the sandwich structure. This paper presented a systematical experimental study on the damage behavior of honeycomb sandwich structure under different configurations. Drop weight tests were carried out to investigate the effect of impact energy, core material and face plate structure on the dynamic response of sandwich plate. Delamination regions were obtained through ultrasonic scanning. Conclusions were made that the damage behavior of the face plate was similar with composite laminates while the energy absorption capacity was related to the parameters of the honeycomb core and the mismatch angle of the face plate.