Fabrication and low-velocity impact response of pyramidal lattice stitched foam sandwich composites

Abstract

In this study, the foam sandwich panels were manufactured by integrating top facesheet and bottom facesheet with pyramidal lattice stitched core to overcome the weak interface between the core and skins of the sandwich structures. Low-velocity impact test and numerical simulation were conducted to reveal the failure mechanisms and energy absorption capacity at sandwich composite with foam core, different strut stitched foam core under different impact energy. The experimental results show showed that the strut core can improve the impact resistance of the specimen, and which is closely related to the diameter of the strut core. Compared with foam sandwich structure, pyramidal lattice stitched foam sandwich composites have comparable specific energy absorptions. The failure modes were also analyzed which is: fiber breakage, delamination, foam deformation and strut core breakage. The research presented here confirms that numerical simulation show good agreement with the experiment.