Crushing morphology of composite sandwich panels under edgewise compression

This article describes the use of finite element analysis (FEA) for the simulation of the crushing response of glass fiber reinforced plastic (GRP) composite sandwich panels aimed to absorb collision energy. FEA is employed to predict the failure modes associated with the geometry of a triggering mechanism that is introduced in the foam-cored sandwich panels, and for analyses of the influence of the specimens' aspect ratio on the specific energy absorption of these panels. The formulated numerical models are found to be effective in reproducing the failure modes and crush zone morphology that is observed experimentally. The numerical results predict an optimum trigger geometry that marks the transition from a catastrophic face buckling (FB) failure to progressive crushing (PC) that dissipates large amounts of energy. They also show that there is not an apparent trend between the aspect ratio (size) of the panels and their specific energy absorption. © SAGE Publications 2009.