Experimental and numerical study of the response to various impact energy levels for composite sandwich plates with different face thicknesses

Composite sandwich structures find wide application in the aerospace sector thanks to their lightweight characteristics. However, composite structures are highly susceptible to low-velocity impact damage and therefore thorough characterization of the impact response and damage process for the used material configurations is necessary. The present study investigates the effect of face-sheet thickness on the impact response and damage mechanisms, experimentally and numerically. A uni-directional, non-crimp fabric is used as reinforcement in the face-sheets, and a closed cell Rohacell 200 Hero polymer foam is used as core material. Low-velocity impact tests are performed in a novel instrumented drop-weight rig that is able to capture the true impact response. A range of impact energies are initially utilized in order to identify when low level damage (LLD), barely visible impact damage (BVID) and visible impact damage (VID) occur. A thorough fractography investigation is performed to characterize the impact damage using both destructive and non-destructive testing. The damage from the impacts in terms of dent depth, peak contact force, deflection and absorbed energy is measured. The results show bilinear responses in dent depth vs. impact energy and absorbed energy vs. impact energy. It is found than the BVID energy works well as an indication for the onset of excessive damage. Fractography reveals that there is a failure mode shift between the LLD and the VID energy levels, and that delaminations predominantly grow along the fiber direction and rotate in a spiral pattern through the thickness, following the laminate ply orientations. Finally, a progressive damage finite element model is developed to simulate both the impact response and the delamination extent, incorporating both intra-laminar and inter-laminar damage modes. The simulation shows good agreement with the experiments.