Impact Damage and Strength Reduction Behavior of Honeycomb Sandwich Structure Subjected to Low Velocity Impact

The goals of the paper are to identify the impact damage and strength reduction behavior of sandwich structure, composed of carbon/epoxy laminates skin and Nomex core with two kinds of thickness (10 and 20mm). For these, low velocity impact tests were conducted using the instrumented impact-testing machine and damages are inspected by SAM. And then, subsequent static tests are conducted under flexural loading to identify the strength reduction behavior of the impacted sandwich structures. The impact damages are mainly delamination in carbon/epoxy skin and their behavior is mostly independent of core thickness. Also, their energy absorbing behavior is identified through calculating the energy absorbed by impact damage. Finally, the strength reduction behavior is evaluated through Caprino’s model, which was proposed on the unidirectional laminates.