Impact Testing of Sandwich Panels

Abstract

Sandwich panels are becoming increasingly popular in the aerospace industry due to their lightweight. Research is continuously being conducted to better understand their behaviour and develop cheaper and better sandwich panels. Sandwich panels are composite materials made by bonding two stiffer face sheets to a lighter core material. The majority of the strength of a sandwich structure comes from the two face sheets the core is designed to hold the two face sheets together and relative to each other. The aim of this project is to compare the damage of sandwich panels, made of different materials and subjected to low velocity impact. All the testing was conducted in the Impact Lab at UNSW@ADFA.