Experimental and Numerical Study on Dynamic Response of Foam-Nickel Sandwich Panels under Near-Field Blast Loading

The explosion products, such as shock waves, fragments and heat energy formed by explosion, act on the plate structure, which may cause structural damage, material failure and even phase transformation of material. In this paper, the damage mechanism and protective effect of near-field blast load on sandwich structure based on foam-nickel core material were studied. Firstly, the near-field explosion test was conducted to investigate the blast response of the foam nickel sandwich structure subjected to blast shock from 8701 explosive at near-field position. The deformation characteristics and stress history of the sandwich structure on the acting location of blast load were carefully investigated via experimental methods. A finite element model of near field explosion was established for effective numerical modelling of the dynamic behaviour of the sandwich structure using the explicit dynamics software ANSYS/LS-DYNA for more comprehensive investigations of the blast shock response of the sandwich structure. The finite element model is reasonable and validated by mesh independence verification and comparing the simulated response behaviour to that from the experimental results for the sandwich structure subjected to near-field blast load. On this basis, the damage mechanism and protection effect of the near-field explosion impact on foam-nickel cores with different density and porosity are simulated more systematically. The investigated results from the experiments and a series of numerical simulations show the large deformation effect due to the extensive energy absorption, which suggests that the sandwich structure based on foam-nickel core material may be expected to become a new choice of protective structure under near-field blast load.

Automated summary

This paper investigates the damage mechanism and protective effect of a sandwich structure based on foam-nickel core material under near-field blast load. Experimental methods are used to study the deformation characteristics and stress history of the sandwich structure on the acting location of blast load. A reasonable finite element model is also established for comprehensive numerical simulations of the sandwich structure's blast shock response. The results suggest that the sandwich structure based on foam-nickel core material can be a viable choice for protective structures under near-field blast load due to its extensive energy absorption capabilities.