Experimental parametric analysis on al 6061 honeycomb core sandwich structure under flexural and low velocity impact test

Abstract

Nowadays there is an increasing demand for lighter vehicles due to steep increases in oil prices and the burning of fossil fuels. So the transport industry is engaged in research activities relating to lightweight structures. Sandwich structures are lightweight structure made of a lightweight core placed in-between two face sheets used for advanced aircraft structures to cheap doors. These structures have superior flexural stiffness, improved impact strength, high specific energy absorbing capability and compressive strength. When Aluminium honeycomb has been used as a core structural material, the sandwich structure finds more Functional applications. The sandwich structure has the potential capability to solve the existing problem when the shortfalls are addressed. Problems of bending and damage resistance are very important for high speed terrestrial and marine vehicles. Sandwich structures have so far shown good capabilities in stiffness and energy absorption. So it is necessary to have a good knowledge relating to the flexural and impact behavior of sandwich structural details built up resorting to sandwich technologies. In this work, the flexural test and low velocity impact test were conducted on honeycomb core sandwich structure to properly understand the response behaviors such as energy absorption, peak force, flexural stiffness, and core shear modulus with respect to the density of honeycomb core sandwich structure. The objective of this research is to make a parametric analysis on the geometric parameters of the aluminum honeycomb core such as cell size, cell wall thickness, and core height newline