Dynamic response of ultralight all-metallic sandwich panel with 3D tube cellular core to shallow-buried explosives

Abstract

The underbody of a vehicle system, either military or civil, is typically made of a relatively thin metallic plate, thus vulnerable to mine blast attacks. To improve the blast resistance, a multitude of protective structures have been proposed as attachments to the thin plate. In the present study, a novel ultralight all-metallic sandwich panel with three-dimensional (3D) tube cellular cores mounted to the vehicle underbody was envisioned as such a protective system. A metallic substrate (mimicking vehicle bottom) was placed above the proposed sandwich panel to construct a sandwich-substrate combinative structure. A series of sandwich panels having 3D tube cellular cores were fabricated via argon protected welding and laser welding. Mechanical responses of the combinative structure subjected to the denotation of 6 kg TNT explosives shallow-buried in dry sand were experimentally measured. Full numerical simulations with the method of finite elements (FE) were subsequently carried out to explore the physical mechanisms underlying the observed dynamic performance and quantify the effects of key geometrical parameters and connection conditions of the protective system. The performance of the proposed sandwich panel under shallow-buried explosives was also compared with competing sandwich constructions having equal mass. Finally, a preliminary optimal design of the 3D tube cellular core was carried out.

Multiple ballistic impacts of thin metallic plates: Numerical simulation

“…Often, protective structures need to endure multiple ballistic impacts, for example, personnel armors and military fortifications subjected to continuous firing from automatic weapons, 1,2 civil/military vehicles hit by blast fragment cluster from shallow-buried mines, 3,4 and spacecrafts/satellites under hypervelocity impact of debris cloud. 5 At present, while many previous studies 6−10 alluded to the importance of multiple ballistic impact loads, few attempted to systematically explore how a structure would deform and fail when subjected to such loads.…”