The dynamic behavior of two types of sandwich composites made of E-Glass Vinyl-Ester (EVE) facesheets and Corecell™ A-series foam with a polyurea interlayer was studied using a shock tube apparatus. The materials, as well as the core layer arrangements, were identical, with the only difference arising in the location of the polyurea interlayer. The foam core itself was layered with monotonically increasing wave impedance of the core layers, with the lowest wave impedance facing the shock loading. For configuration 1, the polyurea interlayer was placed behind the front facesheet, in front of the foam core, while in configuration 2 it was placed behind the foam core, in front of the back facesheet. A high-speed side-view camera, along with a high-speed back-view 3-D Digital Image Correlation (DIC) system, was utilized to capture the real time deformation process as well as mechanisms of failure. Post mortem analysis was also carried out to evaluate the overall blast performance of these two configurations. The results indicated that applying polyurea behind the foam core and in front of the back facesheet will reduce the back face deflection, particle velocity, and in-plane strain, thus improving the overall blast performance and maintaining structural integrity.

Abstract. The present paper experimentally studies the dynamic behaviour of prestressed sandwich composites under blast loading. The in-plane static compression loadings are implemented on the sandwich composites before they are subjected to the transverse shock wave loading. Three different pre-stress levels are chosen. 3-D realtime deformation data are captured by two high-speed photography systems: a backview Digital Image Correlation (DIC) system and a side-view camera system. The results show that pre-stresses can induce local buckling in the front face-sheet of sandwich composites, consequently reduce the blast resistance of sandwich composites.