Architected cellular structures are designed by tessellating unit cells in a periodic fashion. The optimisation of the cellular structures ensures their compatibility with engineering applications in which mechanical properties are highly customised to meet a specific requirement while preserving considerable lightweight. The present paper aims to explore the dynamic buckling behaviour of the imperfect sandwich plate with an architected cellular core. The homogeneous method is adopted to obtain the effective material properties of the cellular core with various unit cell configurations. Different impact loading cases, namely, the sinusoidal, exponential, rectangular, and damping impulses, have been simulated. Meanwhile, two common types of boundary restraints (i.e., simply supported and clamped) are embraced in the investigation. The governing equation system is built based on the first-order shear deformation plate theory with the Von Karman nonlinearity and then resolved by the Galerkin and the fourth-order Runge-Kutta methods. Volmir criterion is employed to determine the critical dynamic buckling load. Several validations are made before conducting systematic numerical experiments. The correlations between the dynamic buckling load of the sandwich model and a number of crucial factors, such as the geometry and relative density of the cell unit, the initial imperfection and boundary conditions of the sandwich plate, elastic foundation coefficients, and damping, are discussed. In addition, the load-to-weight ratio is shown, which will aid in determining the optimal unit cell design and relative density for light-weighting a specific technical component.
