Impact Characteristics of a Honeycomb Sandwich Panel

The concept of light weight design will be very helpful for the tilting train to travel around a curve at a faster speed because the light weight car body makes the center of gravity lower. The impact characteristics of composite materials should be investigated because the impact property of composites is very important. This paper investigates the low-velocity impact characteristics and residual strength conducted on honeycomb sandwich panels. Low-velocity impact tests were carried out at different energy levels on honeycomb sandwich panels using a drop-weight apparatus. The impact-induced damages such as fiber breakage, matrix crack and delamination are examined with an optical microscope apparatus. Residual strength was evaluated by applying three point bending load to honeycomb sandwich panels. Experimental results show that the residual strength is greatly reduced as the impact energy increases. From the microscopic observation data, matrix crack, fiber breakage and delamination are the main impact damages of honeycomb sandwich panels.