AIRCRAFT SANDWICH STRUCTURES WITH FOLDED CORE UNDER IMPACT LOAD

Folded structures made of composite materials have gained interest in the aerospace industry as a promising sandwich core structure. In this paper the mechanical behaviour of such a sandwich structure with a folded core made of carbon fibre-reinforced plastic under low velocity impact loads is investigated experimentally and numerically. At first the core properties under compressive and transverse shear loads are characterised building a basis for the validation of the simulation models. Low velocity impact tests under various energy levels are described with respect to the evaluated damage of face and core and are finally simulated with LS-DYNA. These simulations were used to investigate the influence of different parameters on the impact behaviour numerically.