Experimental and numerical study on energy absorption of lattice-core sandwich beam

Quasi-static three-point bending tests on sandwich beams with expanded metal sheets as core were conducted. Relationships between the force and displacement at the mid-span of the sandwich beams were obtained from the experiments. Numerical simulations were carried out using ABAQUS/EXPLCIT and the results were thoroughly compared with the experimental results. A parametric analysis was performed using a Box-Behnken design (BBD) for the design of experiments (DOE) techniques and a finite element modeling. Then, the influence of the core layers number, size of the cell and, thickness of the substrates was investigated. The results showed that the increase in the size of the expanded metal cell in a reasonable range was required to improve the performance of the structure under bending collapse. It was found that core layers number and size of the cell was key factors governing the quasi-static response of the sandwich beams with lattice cores.