Journal of Science  and Technology of Composites

Journal of Science and Technology of Composites

Experimental study of high-velocity impact behavior of sandwich structures with FML skins and glass fiber reinforced syntactic foam core

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Islamic Azad University, Lanjan Branch, Iran.
Abstract
In this research, the high-velocity impact behavior of sandwich structures with FML skins and glass fiber-reinforced syntactic foam core was conducted, experimentally. The syntactic foam was produced using epoxy resin and glass microballoon with 30%, 40%, and 60% volume fractions. The FML skins on each side of the cores comprised two layers of glass fiber-reinforced polymer composite (GFRP) and one aluminum layer sheet. In addition, a series of reinforced samples were created using 30% volume fraction of microballoon and 15% chopped glass fibers. The samples were subjected to high-velocity impact tests using a one-stage gas gun and a conical-head aluminum projectile. The results were used to investigate the effects of microballoon volume fraction and glass fiber-reinforced syntactic foam core on the high-velocity impact behavior of structures. The results showed that increasing the microballoon volume fraction from 20% to 30% decreased the projectile residual velocity and increased the ballistic limit velocity and penetration energy. Furthermore, reinforcing syntactic foam with glass fiber significantly affected the high-velocity impact behavior of the structure.
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