Compression after impact behavior of titanium honeycomb sandwich structures

Titanium honeycomb sandwich structures are gradually used in several newly developed aircrafts in China. During the manufacturing process and aircraft service life, low-velocity impacts from foreign objects (typically stones, tools and hails, etc.), would quite likely happen and could not be completely avoided. In order to evaluate the influence of low-velocity impact damage on titanium honeycomb sandwich structures, unidirectional in-plane compression tests on both intact and impact damaged sandwich panels were conducted to obtain their failure modes and compressive failure strength. Test results showed that the low-velocity impact damage could cause the change in failure modes and a 9% to 15% decrease in the compressive failure strength. Different impact energy levels showed a limited influence on the compressive failure strength. Numerical analysis was conducted to study the compression after impact behavior of titanium sandwich panels. Parametric finite element models that contained all the geometric and the structural details of honeycomb core cells, as well as the indentation and the crushed core region, were developed in the analysis. The numerical results successfully exhibited the failure process of the intact and impact damaged titanium sandwich panels subjected to unidirectional in-plane compression, similar to what observed in the tests. The predicted compressive failure strength also agreed very well with the test data.