The performance of metal sandwich plates under impulsive blast loads is compared to that of solid plates made of the same material and having the same weight. Three core geometries are considered: pyramidal truss, square honeycomb and folded plate. Plates of infinite length and clamped along their sides are subject to uniform impulsive load. The momentum impulse is applied to the face sheet towards the blast in the case of the sandwich plate, while it is distributed uniformly through the thickness of the solid plate. Large impulses are considered that are sufficient to produce lateral plate deflections more than 10% of the plate width. Fracture is not considered; the plates are assumed to have sufficient ductility to be able to sustain the deformations. A limited study of weight optimization is carried out for each of the core types with respect to the respective geometric parameters, including core and face sheet thickness, core member aspect ratios and relative density. A well-designed sandwich plate can sustain significantly larger blast impulses than a solid plate of the same weight. If the blast medium is water, fluid-structure interaction can reduce the momentum imparted to a sandwich plate by almost a factor of two relative to that imparted to a solid plate of the same weight, and, consequently, the relative benefit of the sandwich plate is significantly enhanced over its solid counterpart. r
The question motivating the present study is whether metal sandwich plates with su ciently strong cores are able to sustain substantially larger blast loads than monolithic solid plates of the same material and total mass. Circular plates clamped at their edges are considered under blast loads large enough to produce substantial de ections. The material is elastic-perfectly plastic. Material strain-rate dependence and fracture are neglected. A dynamic ÿnite element formulation for elastic-plastic solids is employed to analyze the plate response. Uniformly distributed blast impulses are considered. As a basis for comparison, complete results are obtained for solid plates for both zero-period and ÿnite-period impulses. Similar computations are carried out for a set of sandwich plates having tetragonal truss cores. The potential for superior strength and energy absorbing capacity of the sandwich plates is demonstrated compared with solid plates having the same mass. The importance of both the strength and energy absorbing capacity of the core are highlighted for superior blast resistance. Proposals for further research are made. ?
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.