Impact Study of Sandwich Composite Structures with Delamination

Finite element analyses were conducted to analyze the dynamic response of an unbalanced sandwich beam, a balanced sandwich beam, and a balanced sandwich plate subject to a low energy impact. In particular, strain versus time history, failure location and mode, and the influence of an existing delamination crack on the failure were investigated. It was found that, in the presence of a small delamination crack, the failure load of a sandwich...