Design and analysis of a protective hybrid honeycomb sandwich panel against blast loading

Abstract

This paper presents an innovative hybrid honeycomb core for blast loading protection sandwich panel, where auxetic and hexagonal cells are combined with the aim of enhancing blast performance. The novel sandwich panel’s blast resistance was evaluated by conducting dynamic explicit analysis using 6.5 g of TNT with a constant stand-off distance of 34 mm. In the primary simulation, the experimental results from the literature regarding the monolithic plate with the same mass were used to validate the designed finite element models. Furthermore, the hybrid honeycomb core was assessed against its conventional honeycomb counterpart in terms of back face sheet mid-point deflection, deformation modes, and plastic dissipation energy of the core. Finally, by changing the layout of the hybrid core’s layers, the behavior of each configuration in withstanding explosive loads is evaluated. It can be concluded from the obtained results that the proposed core has superior blast mitigation characteristics compared to its standard counterparts. As a result, the improvement of plastic dissipation energy and reduction in back face sheet deflection were observed to be significant.