Low-velocity impact behavior of interlayer hybrid foldcore sandwich structures with carbon/glass fibers

Abstract

Interlayer hybrid foldcore sandwich structures have been introduced in this study. Both facesheets and foldcores were hybridized in the same ply sequence with two layers of plain woven carbon (C) and two layers of satin woven glass (G) fiber prepregs (Carbon-to-Glass ratio 1:1). Foldcore sandwich structures with six-ply combinations were designed including two symmetric layups (GCCG and CGGC) and four asymmetric layups (CGCG, GCGC, CCGG, and GGCC). The static compression and low-velocity impact performance of foldcore sandwich structures of different ply sequences were investigated. A user-defined material subroutine (VUMAT) was employed to characterize the damage evolution of composite materials based on selected failure criteria. The findings revealed that hybridization was effective in enhancing its energy absorption value of pure carbon fiber foldcore sandwich structures in terms of static compression performance. The damage degree of the interlayer hybrid foldcore sandwich structures increased gradually with the increasing impact energy. Moreover, the damage of facesheet was mainly caused by fiber tensile, matrix tensile damage and delamination, and damage of foldcore was mainly delamination. GCGC sandwich panel with asymmetrical cross-ply sequence has the optimal load bearing capacity, and CGGC sandwich panel with symmetrical layup has a strong energy absorption capacity under high-energy impact load. The foldcore sandwich structure showed smaller peak load, longer crushing distance, and more energy absorption value under larger oblique impact angle. The simulation and experimental results show good agreement in peak force, maximum energy absorption, and damage mode.

Keywords:

• Foldcore sandwich structures
• low-velocity impact
• ply sequence
• energy absorption

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this article.

Authors’ contributions

Yunfei Deng, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Supervision, Conceptualization, Resources; Xiang Li, Investigation, Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Writing-original draft, Writing-review & editing; Xiaoyu Hu, Writing-review & editing, Validation; Changfang Ding, Writing-review & editing.

Additional information

Funding

Thanks to the National Natural Science Foundation of China Youth Project (No. 11702317), and the Fundamental Research for the Central Universities (No. 3122021048) for supporting the present work.