Prediction of impact damage on sandwich composite panels

Sandwich structures are extensively employed in the aerospace and automobile industries. The understanding of their behaviour under impact conditions is extremely important for the design and manufacturing of these engineering structures since impact problems are directly related to structural integrity and safety requirements. This paper investigates the damage behaviour of composite sandwich panels with aramid paper honeycomb (NOMEX) and polyetherimide (PEI) foam cores under transverse impacts at high velocities. A numerical model was developed using the dynamic explicit finite element (FE) structure analysis program PAM-CRASH. For both sandwich structures numerical analysis reproduces physical behaviour observed experimentally in high velocity impact tests.