To study the protection property of aluminum alloy sandwich panels with honeycomb cores under the attack of bullets or debris, quasi-static perforation, and ballistic impact tests were conducted, in which the thicknesses of the face sheet and core were 0.5–2.0 and 12.7 mm, respectively, while projectiles with diameter 7.5 mm and impact velocity 50–220 m/s were employed. Based on the experiments, the influences of impact velocity, face sheet thickness, core density as well as the nose shape of the projectiles were investigated. The results showed that in the impact tests, the sandwich panels dissipated much more energy than those in quasi-static perforation tests, and the energy absorption and ballistic limit of the sandwich panels increased with the increase of impact velocity. The influence of face sheet thickness was more remarkable than the core density, which was due to the relative density of honeycomb is too small. Although the increase of core density could induce the increase of energy absorption, this effect is more effective for thinner face sheet. Moreover, under the same impact velocity about 200 m/s and face sheet thickness 1.0 mm, the ballistic limit for conical-nosed projectile is highest, while it is lowest for flat-nosed projectile.

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The deformation and snap-through behaviour of a thin-walled elastic spherical shell statically compressed on a flat surface or impacted against a flat surface are studied theoretically and numerically in order to estimate the influence of the dynamic effects on the response. A table tennis ball is considered as an example of a thin-walled elastic shell. It is shown that the increase of the impact velocity leads to a variation of the deformed shape thus resulting in larger deformation energy. The increase of the contact force is caused by both the increased contribution of the inertia forces and contribution of the increased deformation energy.The contact force resulted from deformation/inertia of the ball and the shape of the deformed region are calculated by the proposed theoretical models and compared with the results from both the finite element analysis and some previously obtained experimental data. Good agreement is demonstrated.

Electro-rheological (ER) fluid is a smart suspension which can be changed promptly from Newtonian to Bingham plastic material when subjected to a high-intensity electric field. This property of ER fluid makes it possible to be applied in adaptive energy absorbers. As the impact velocity encountered in applications could be very large, it is necessary to characterize the ERF under high shear rate. In this study, a capillary rheo-meter with parallel duct was designed and manufactured which is capable of producing a shear rate as high as 5000(1/s). Two giant ER fluids with mass concentration C=51% and 44.5% and a commercial density-matched ER fluid with C= 37.5% were characterized. The experimental results show that when the ER fluids are free of electric field (E=0kV/mm), they are Newtonian. However, for the former two ER fluids, the deposition effect is very remarkable and stirring has to be made continuously to keep the suspension stable. With the increase of the electric field intensity, the yield shear stresses of ER fluids increase exponentially but their viscosities do not change much. It is also found that within the parallel duct, the flow of ER fluids exhibits notable fluctuations, whose period increases with the increase of electric field intensity and is independent of the shear rate.