Energy absorption characteristics of origami-inspired honeycomb sandwich structures under low-velocity impact loading

Abstract

Lightweight origami structure has received increasing attention in the past years. This paper presents a new origami-inspired honeycomb sandwich plate, taking inspiration from two emerging sandwich structures reported in literatures. The purpose of this work was to investigate the influence of structural parameters on the impact response and demonstrate the outperformance of this novel sandwich structure. The low-velocity impact response of the origami-inspired honeycomb sandwich was investigated experimentally and numerically. And the numerical prediction closely matched the experimental results in terms of contact-force histories and permanent deformations of sandwich plates. The influence of structural parameters on the energy absorption characteristics has been analyzed by using the improved finite element model. Finally, the results of comparisons showed that origami-inspired honeycomb exceeded traditional honeycomb in energy absorption characteristics.

Keywords

• Honeycomb sandwich
• Origami-inspired
• Low-velocity impact
• Finite element analysis