Impact Loading of Composite and Sandwich Structures

SOHRAB KAZEMAHVAZI

Doctoral Thesis Stockholm, Sweden 2010

TRITA-AVE 2010-58 ISSN 1651-7660 ISBN 978-91-7415-746-8

Kungliga Tekniska H ogskolan (KTH) Department of Aeronautical and Vehicle Engineering SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden

Akademisk avhandling som med tillst and av Kungl Tekniska H ogskolan framl agges till oentlig granskning f or avl aggande av teknologie doktorsexamen i L attkonstruktioner torsdagen den 8 november kl 10.15 i sal F3, Lindstedtsv agen 26, Kungliga Tekniska H ogskolan, Stockholm.
Sohrab Kazemahvazi, autumn 2010

Tryck: Universitetsservice US-AB

iii
In memory of Peter Hogsl att, 1981-2002

v Acknowledgments The work presented in this thesis was primarily carried out at the Department of Aeronautical and Vehicle Engineering at KTH. A number of detours to University of Southampton, University of California - Santa Barbara and University of Cambridge were performed and the Universities together with their Professors are greatly acknowledged. Funding for the work conducted in this thesis was provided by The Oce of Naval Research (ONR) through programme ocer Dr. Yapa D.S. Rajapakse (Grant No. N00014-07-1-0344) together with The Swedish Defence Materiel Administration through Mr. Anders L onn o. The nancial support is greatly acknowledged. The are a number of individuals that have contributed to this work and to whom I am very grateful. In particular, I would like to thank Professor Dan Zenkert for being a great supervisor, mentor and friend. I guess it is not easy having a generalist and entrepreneur as a PhD-student, but you always managed to provide me with great advice, both in my research and in my other undertakings. I would also like to thank Dr. Vikram Deshpande for his support, help and guidance during my PhD. It is always very inspiring to work with you. During the years I have had a number of master thesis students which all helped me in some way. In particular I would like to thank Mr. J orn Kiele and Mr. Daniel Tanner for their great eorts and their contribution to this thesis. I would like to express my gratitude to all of my colleagues and friends that helped me in my research. In particular: Anders and Stefan, for teaching me all about research in those early days as a masters student. Markus, for helping me with the beautiful lay-out of this thesis. Joonas, for being a great oce mate. Zuheir, for being a great oce mate, for his belief in metal structures and his eorts to teach me all about it. Ylva, for her good suggestions and thoughts which helped improve the introduction of this thesis. Dr. Benjamin Russell (University of Cambridge) and Martin Nilsson (FOI), for helping me doing a lot of fun experiments. Thanks to my entrepreneur colleagues, Andreas Broryd and H akan Lutz, without whom I could nish this PhD in half the time, but the experience would have only been half as good. Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank my family and my Pantea for their great support. Especially, I would like to thank my mother who taught me how to be, think and act.

Sohrab Kazemahvazi

Stockholm in 2010

vii Abstract
Low weight is one of the most important factors in the design process of high speed naval ships, road vehicles and aircrafts. Lower structural weight enables the possibility of down-sizing the propulsion system and thus decrease manufacturing and operating costs as well as reducing the environmental impact. Two ecient ways of reducing the structural weight of a structure is by using high performance composite materials and by using geometrically ecient structures such as the sandwich concept. In addition to good quasi-static performance dierent structures have dynamic impact requirements. For a road vehicle this might be crash worthiness, an aircraft has to be able to sustain bird strikes or debris impact and a naval ship needs to be protected against blast or ballistic loading. In this thesis important aspects of dynamic loading of composite and sandwich structures are addressed and presented in the appended papers as follows. In paper A the notch sensitivity of non-crimp fabric glass bre composites is investigated. The notch sensitivity is investigated for several dierent laminate congurations at varying tensile loading rate. It is shown that the non-crimp fabrics have very low notch sensitivity, especially for laminate congurations with a large amount of bres in the load direction. Further, the notch sensitivity is shown to be fairly constant with increasing loading rates (up to 100/s). In paper B a heuristic approach is made in order to create an analytical model to predict the residual strength of composite laminates with multiple randomly distributed holes. The basis for this model is a comprehensive experimental programme. It is found that unidirectional laminates with holes predominantly fail through three failure modes: global net-section failure, local net-section failure and local shear failure. Each failure mode can be described by a physical geometric constant which is used to create the analytical model. The analytical model can predict the residual strength of unidirectional laminates with multiple, randomly distributed holes with good accuracy. In paper C and paper D, novel prismatic high performance all-composite sandwich cores are proposed. In paper C an analytical model is developed that predicts the strength and stiness properties of the suggested cores. In paper D the prismatic cores are manufactured and tested in shear loading and out-of-plane compression loading. Further, the analytical model is used to create failure mechanism maps to map out the overall behaviour of the dierent core congurations. The novel cores show very high specic strength and stiness and are potential candidates as cores in high performance naval ship hulls. In paper E the dynamic properties of prismatic composite cores are investigated. The dynamic out-of-plane strength of an unit cell is tested experimentally in a gas gun - Kolsky bar set-up. Especially, dierent failure mechanisms and their eect on the structural strength are investigated. It is found that cores with low relative density (slender core members) show very large inertial stabilisation eects and have a dynamic strength that can be more than seven times higher than the quasi-static strength. Cores with higher relative density show less increase in dynamic strength. The main reason for the dynamic strengthening is due to the strain rate sensitivity of the parent material rather than inertial stabilisation of the core members.

Dissertation
This doctoral thesis is based on an introduction to the area of research and the following appended papers:

Paper A
S. Kazemahvazi, D. Zenkert, M. Burman. Notch and strain rate sensitivity of non-crimp fabric composites. Composites Science and Technology, Volume 69, Issue 6, May 2009, Pages 793-800

Paper B
S. Kazemahvazi, J. Kiele, D. Zenkert. Tensile strength of UD-composite laminates with multiple holes. Composites Science and Technology, Volume 70, Issue 8, August 2010, Pages 1280-1287

Paper C
S. Kazemahvazi, D. Zenkert. Corrugated all-composite sandwich structures. Part 1: Modeling. Composites Science and Technology, Volume 69, Issues 7-8, June 2009, Pages 913-919

Paper D
S. Kazemahvazi, D. Tanner, D. Zenkert. Corrugated all-composite sandwich structures. Part 2: Failure mechanisms and experimental programme. Composites Science and Technology, Volume 69, Issues 7-8, June 2009, Pages 920-925

Paper E
S. Kazemahvazi, B.P. Russell, V.S. Deshpande and D. Zenkert. Dynamic crush response of sandwich structures with prismatic composite cores. Manuscript submitted. ix

x Parts of this thesis have also been presented as follows: S. Kazemahvazi, D. Zenkert, M. Burman. Notch and strain rate sensitivity of non-crimp fabric composites. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Composite Materials (ICCM-16), Kyoto (Japan), 2007. S. Kazemahvazi, J. Kiele, D. Zenkert. Tensile strength of UD-composite laminates with multiple holes. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Composite Materials (ICCM-17), Edinburgh (UK), 2009. S. Kazemahvazi and D. Zenkert, The compressive and shear responses of corrugated hierarchical and foam lled sandwich structures. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Sandwich Structures, Porto, Portugal, 2008. S. Kazemahvazi, J. Kiele, B.P. Russell, V.S. Deshpande and D. Zenkert, Impact properties of corrugated composite sandwich cores, 9th International Conference on Sandwich Structures, Pasadena, CA, USA, 2010.

Contents
I Introduction
1 The 1.1 1.2 1.3 Need for Lightweight Structures The Need for Lightweight Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Design of Lightweight Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Impact Protection Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1
3 4 6 7 11 11 12 13 19 21 23 24 24 24 25 27

Background to Thesis 2.1 Blast and Impact on Naval Ship Hulls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Coupled Blast and Impact Loading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Sandwich Structures for Improved Blast Performance . . . . . . . . . Ethics in Military Research Objectives Summary of appended papers 5.1 Paper A . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Paper B . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Paper C and paper D . 5.4 Paper E . . . . . . . . .

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Bibliography

II Appended papers

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xi

Part I

Introduction

1 The Need for Lightweight Structures

Humans are creative, and more importantly, humans are co-creative. Everyday billions of great ideas, products, services and long lasting memories are created all over the world - simply due to human co-creativity. One of the basic needs for human co-creativity to occur, is the possibility for humans to meet each other, to interact. Thus, although single individuals can be creative, co-creativeness can only occur when humans interact. The need for such interaction to occur is the possibility of transportation. Thanks to our transportation system, we can today cover long or short distances, quick and easy. Unfortunately, although being the fundamental ingredient for co-creativeness, transportation occurs at a big cost for you, your co-creative fellows and the earth. This doctoral thesis in Lightweight Structures does not only encourage all means of transportation and promote co-creativeness, but it also provides valuable knowledge on how transportation can be done using as little resources as possible so that co-creativeness can continue without emptying your pockets and polluting the earth.

Figure 1.1: Trac in Stockholm (in courtesy of Stockholm stad)

S. Kazemahvazi

1.1

The Need for Lightweight Design

There are a number of applications where a lightweight structure is benecial. Typical examples are dierent types of vehicles such as aircrafts, cars and ships. When a vehicle has a low weight, less energy is required to move it and thus it is possible to reduce the fuel consumption. Reduced fuel consumption does not only decrease the environmental impact but it also reduces the in-service cost of the vehicle. Potential cost and fuel savings, that can be made by lowering the structural weight, have been investigated by Kaufmann [1] for the application aircrafts and by Stenius [2] for the application of high speed ships. The scope of this thesis is primarily weight reduction and structural design of naval ships. An introduction to this topic is given in section 2. In this section, the need for lightweight design is further exemplied by showing how weight reduction aects the energy consumption of road vehicles. Road vehicles cover a major part of the human transportation. Road transportation is primarily an environmental problem within large city areas where the method of transportation typically involve commuting by car, bus or train. The photograph in gure 1.1 depicts a typical rush hour trac scenario just outside the central parts of Stockholm, Sweden. Statistically, 41 % of the journeys to work are done by car whereas 32 % are done using public transportation. An average car [3] on this picture will travel 19 km (single journey to work) at an average velocity of approximate 25 km/h. Further, 86 % of the cars are only occupied by a single driver without any passengers. Thus, by looking at the statistics one might ask oneself; is it really necessary to use a 1500 kg piece of expensive machinery to travel 19 km alone at a speed of 25 km/h? I think not!

FD FUh Facc FR

Figure 1.2: The main drag forces that are induced to a ground vehicle

There is a very close relationship between the weight of a vehicle and its energy consumption. Figure 1.2 schematically shows the drag forces that act on a road vehicle (car, bus, train, bicycle etc). These are the dierent resistive forces that

Introduction

the vehicle engine need to overcome in order to push the vehicle forward. Typically there are four important drag forces to take into account; aerodynamic drag, rolling resistance, inertia due to acceleration of the vehicle and inertia due to uphill movement of the vehicle. The aerodynamic drag is completely decoupled from the weight of the vehicle and is coupled to the shape and size of the body as well as its surface properties. The rolling resistance and inertia forces are however strongly coupled to the weight of the vehicle. Analytical models which gives approximations of the described drag forces can be found in [4]. In order to illustrate the eect of weight on energy consumption, three ctive vehicles have been designed. All vehicles have the same properties (including aerodynamic properties) and carry a single driver, the only dierence is the structural mass of the vehicles. Small vehicle has a mass of 100 kg (comparable to a moped), the medium size vehicle has a mass of 400 kg (comparable to a very lightweight car) and the large size vehicle has a mass of 1500 kg (comparable to a mid-size car). Figure 1.3 shows the approximate power which is required to accelerate the vehicles 0-50 km/h in 6 seconds on a light uphill slope, a quite common scenario in todays urban trac. The small vehicle needs about 3 kW of power whereas the medium
35 30 Required power (kW) 25 20 15 10 5 0 Small Medium Vehicle size Large 3 9 29

Figure 1.3: The required power to accelerate a vehicle 0-50 km/h on a light uphill slope

and large vehicles need 9 kW and 30 kW of power respectively. This means that one needs a ten times more powerful engine in a large vehicle, in order to get the same performance as a small vehicle, and that will of course aect the fuel consumption! What if one could design a vehicle with a weight of the same order of magnitude as a moped, but with car reminiscent comfort and safety properties, an ultra lightweight vehicle? The company Vehiconomics (http://www.vehiconomics.com) did just this and their ultra lightweight vehicle is called Smite (http://www.mysmite.com). Human co-creativity will continue.

S. Kazemahvazi

1.2

Design of Lightweight Structures

So far the need for lightweight structures has been justied. The question remains: how is a structure designed so that the structural stiness and strength properties are kept high, but with maintained low structural weight? One way of designing a lightweight structure is to develop new materials, e.g. new polymer materials or metal alloys with enhanced properties compared to the existing ones. This is however a rather costly and time consuming endeavour. Another way is to combine

Face sheet

Face sheet Core material

Figure 1.4: Schematic drawing of a sandwich plate

two existing materials and create a hybrid material (a composite material) so that one uses the best properties of both constitutive materials [5]. Fibre reinforced plastics (FRP) constitute such a family of hybrid materials with very competitive weight specic strength and stiness properties compared to traditional metal alloys. Further FRPs enable the possibility to tailor the material properties since the load carrying bres can be distributed in any direction. Another way to develop a lightweight structure is by designing a geometrically ecient structure. In order to improve the exural stiness and strength of a structure one can use a so called sandwich design, see gure 1.4. In a sandwich design, two thin, sti and strong materials are separated by a thick and lightweight core. The purpose of the core material is simply to separate the face sheets and transfer the loads between them. The concept is similar to that of an I-beam, which is a very weight ecient structure, with the dierence that the sandwich structure is continuous. Typical materials that are used as face sheets in sandwich structures are steel, aluminium, carbon bre reinforced plastics and glass bre reinforced plastics. Traditional core materials are balsa wood, polymer foams and aluminium honeycombs. In summary: by choosing the appropriate materials and by designing ecient

Introduction

structural geometries it is possible to get lighter structures with remaining structural stiness and strength.

1.3

Impact Protection Requirements

In addition to general stiness and strength requirements, there can be other types of requirements on a structure. Examples of such are re protection, sound insulation, impact protection and esthetic requirements. Thus, it is not always sucient to design a lightweight structure which meet general stiness and strength requirements, but other potential requirements must also be fullled. This thesis focuses on the impact protection requirements of lightweight structures, and primarily in the application of naval ship hulls. The impact protection requirements for naval ship hulls are described in more detail in section 2. In this section, brief examples of impact protection requirements for two other types of vehicles are given; a car and an aircraft. A car has to carry general structural loads from e.g. wheel suspensions, but at the same time it needs to be able to protect the passengers in the event of a collision. Aircrafts are primarily designed for certain in-service load conditions, from e.g. the wings, but they also need to be able to withstand impact loading events when subjected to bird strikes or hail storms. In an impact event, the material and the structure are deformed at higher rates (higher speeds) which potentially could give a completely dierent behaviour compared to a quasi-static (low speed) loading scenario. The rate at which a material is deformed is referred to as the strain rate, = d = v/L dt (1.1)

where is the strain, v the deformation speed and L the length of the deformed structure. In order to design a structure for high loading rate events, comprehensive knowledge of the material and structural behaviour is required. Further, an in-depth knowledge of the impact loading scenario is also required since these generally are more complicated than quasi-static loading scenarios.

Crash Worthiness of Cars

The design process of a crash structure for a car is a complex and potentially expensive process. The crash structure of a car can roughly be divided into two main parts, the protective barrier and the energy absorption zones. The protective barrier is a safety cell and is supposed to contain the passengers without any large deformations. Ideally the passenger compartment would deform as little as possible, so that there is room for the passengers to decelerate without hitting any obstacles. If a structure does not deform, on contrary, the passengers will be subjected to fatal accelerations. Due to this, a protective barrier is usually combined with energy absorbing zones, also called deformation zones. If designed correctly, the energy absorbing structure

S. Kazemahvazi

will start to deform with a predened maximum load/acceleration. The chosen maximum acceleration is typically the value that the human body can sustain before organs and tissues are damaged. All major car manufacturers today use metals alloys as primary structure in cars. The high loading rate behaviour of metals are understood quite well and there are several ecient numerical simulation tools to predict the crash behaviour of e.g. energy absorption zones and protective barriers of a car. For composite materials and sandwich structures, however, this is still under development. Not only is there a need for knowledge about the high strain rate properties of the parent material, but one also need to understand the dierent competing energy dissipating failure mechanisms. Once this is done, it is possible to develop more accurate simulation tools that will contribute to substantially reduce the cost of the design process (experiments are costly!). In this thesis the high strain rate properties of glass and carbon bre reinforced plastics are explored and will, together with many other research results, give us a better knowledge of the dynamic behaviour of composites.

Impact Protection Requirements for Aircrafts

Todays economical and environmental demands have forced the airplane manufacturers to produce lighter aircrafts to reduce the fuel consumption. Already being relatively geometrical ecient structures, a natural step in reducing the airplane weight has been the use of hybrid materials. Initiatives such as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus 350XWB are two examples of airplanes that mainly (>50%) consist of composite materials. Figure 1.5 shows the breakdown of materials of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Major structural parts of the airplane is built from composite materials and sandwich structures. As mentioned earlier, airplanes do not

Carbon Laminate Carbon sandwich Other composites Aluminium Titanium

Figure 1.5: Breakdown of materials used in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner [6]

only have general stiness and strength requirements, but one also need to consider impact loading scenarios in the design process of the aircraft. Two examples of

Introduction

impact loading scenarios are soft and hard body impacts. Bird strike is a typical soft body impact and hail storms and impacts from runway debris are examples of hard body impacts. These impact loading scenarios are not only a threat for the ight safety, but also a great cost for the aviation industry. Bird strikes alone costs the aviation industry more than 1 billion USD dollar each year [6]. According to the Federal Aviation regulations (25-571), ap structures of large transport airplanes have to withstand an impact of a 1.81 kg bird at normal operating speeds. During the past decade numerous research groups have investigated the response of composite and sandwich structures subjected to impact loading [69] and used dierent approaches in developing numerical simulation tools. Although some projects report good correlation between numerical simulations and experiments for specic load conditions, there are still no reliable tools (material models) for solving generic impact problems. Another important aspect, in the design process of an airplane, is the post-impact strength of the structure. One need to ascertain that the damaged component is able to meet the in-service strength requirements, so the plane can be brought to rest safely. In this thesis a novel phenomenological model has been developed that predicts the residual strength of unidirectional composite laminates with multiple holes. This model can be used to predict the post-impact strength of e.g. airplane structures that have been subjected to debris impact or similar.

2 Background to Thesis
2.1 Blast and Impact on Naval Ship Hulls

Naval ship hulls can be exposed to several severe dynamic loading conditions. The load conditions can be of a global type or a local type. In a global loading condition, a high intensity pressure wave hits a larger portion of the structure (e.g. slamming loads, air- and water blasts). In a local loading condition, projectiles or fragments hit a part of the structure creating damage and/or holes. An introduction to blast loading of structures is given by Rajendran and Lee [10], Ngo et al [11] and Zhu and Lu [12]. Generally speaking, a blast scenario can be divided into four stages: the explosion process, the shock wave propagation in the uid, the uid-structure interaction and the response of the impacted structure. First an explosion process occurs where rapid chemical reactions converts the original material into gas at very high temperature and pressure. This creates a high intensity pressure wave that propagates into the surrounding medium [13]. In water, the pressure pulse initially propagates at a speed that is three times higher than the speed of sound in water [10], and then the speed decreases gradually. At a distance of approximate 20 times the charge radius the pressure pulse stabilises and propagates constantly at the speed of sound in water. An air explosion is signicantly dierent from explosions in water, this is mainly due to the dierences in the physical properties of the media. The most important physical properties that determines the shock wave behaviour is the density, compressibility, velocity of sound, temperature and ambient pressure of the medium. A schematic view of an air blast or a water blast wave is given in gure 2.1. The pressure-time response of an ideal air blast can be described by the Friedlander equation, p(t) = P0 + Pm [1 t t/td e ] td (2.1)

where P0 is the ambient pressure, t is the instantaneous time, td is the positive duration of the pressure pulse and is called the waveform parameter which depends on the peak overpressure, Pm , of the shock wave. For an underwater explosion the ambient pressure is the hydrostatic pressure. In an air blast, the peak overpressure, Pm , is generally in the same order of magnitude as the ambient pressure (100 kPa), whereas in the underwater explosion the peak overpressure is several orders of 11

12

S. Kazemahvazi

Peak overpressure, Pm

Ambient pressure, P0

Positive phase duration

Negative phase duration

Figure 2.1: Schematic view of the pressure-time history of a blast wave

magnitude larger than the hydrostatic pressure. Therefore the hydrostatic pressures, in an underwater blast, can be neglected and 2.1 reduces to,

p(t) = Pm et/

(2.2)

where is the time taken by the shock wave to decay to 1/e of the peak value and Pm is the peak pressure. Within the scope of this research, the blast and impact properties of naval ships were investigated in two ways. Firstly, coupled eects of fragment and blast loading were investigated. This typically occurs when a structure is subjected to multiple fragment impacts that is followed by a high intensity blast load. Secondly, novel sandwich core concepts were developed with the aim to improve the blast protection performance of the structure. In proceeding sections a brief introduction is given to the research area.

2.2

Coupled Blast and Impact Loading

When an artillery shell detonates, not only a high intensity pressure wave is generated, but it also produces signicant amount of fragments. The fragments, of various size, travel at high speed and can create patterns of penetration and perforation damages on the structure. Subsequent to these fragment impact damages the high

Introduction

13

intensity pressure wave will hit the structure and induce large strains. Hence, the pressure wave hits an already damaged structure. Figure 2.2 shows an example of a composite plate which has been subjected to fragment impact loading from an artillery shell and gure 2.3 schematically shows the coupled loading event. The main question that needs to be investigated is thus: What is the load carrying capacity of a damaged composite plate, such as the one depicted in gure 2.2, when subjected to a high intensity blast load? The coupled eects of blast and fragment loading has previously been investigated for concrete buildings [1416], but so far little work has been published on coupled fragment and blast loading of ship hull structures. The problem of coupled blast

30 cm

Figure 2.2: A composite plate which has been subjected to fragment impact damages from an artillery shell.

and ballistic loading contains a number of dierent key questions which have been investigated in this thesis. Example of such questions are,
Is the material strain rate sensitive, i.e. does the strength change with changing loading rate? Are composite laminates notch sensitive and does the notch sensitivity change with loading rate and/or laminate lay-up sequence? Can damages from fragment impacts be approximated with drilled holes of similar size?

2.3

Sandwich Structures for Improved Blast Performance

A sandwich structure which is subject to an intense blast (either in air or water) is imposed to a sudden velocity on the face sheet towards the blast [17]. The deformation of the sandwich structure can be divided into three stages, shown schematically in gure 2.4. The rst stage is the uid-structure interaction stage,

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S. Kazemahvazi

Figure 2.3: Schematic view of a coupled fragment impact and blast loading scenario

during which an exponentially decaying pressure pulse hits the structure and imparts an impulse to it. Since the duration of the primary shock wave and the time period of the core crushing is substantially shorter than the response time of the sandwich structure, the loaded face sheet will accelerate and attain an initial velocity, v0 . The core and the back face will remain stationary during this stage. During the second stage, the core material is deformed (preferably crushed) by the advancing face sheet and thus the front face sheet is decelerated by the core while the core and the back face sheet are accelerated. At the end of the second stage, the core and the face sheets have attained a uniform velocity. The nal stage of the sandwich response then comprises of dissipation of the remaining kinetic energy by a combination of beam bending and longitudinal stretching of the structure (and the accompanied failure modes). Based on the fundamental stages of deformation described above, the sandwich core can be designed so that the blast protection performance is increased (compared to a monolithic structure with the same mass per unit area). There are essentially two ways of doing this; (i) by increasing the energy absorption during the core crushing stage or (ii) by increasing the cores ability to sustain longitudinal stretching. During the past decade there has been an eort to develop novel core topologies that have good performance compared to traditional foam cores [1820]. The core topologies can be divided into two main categories: prismatic cores and lattice truss cores, see gure 2.5. Examples of prismatic cores are square honeycombs [21, 22], corrugated cores and diamond conguration cores [2325]. Lattice truss cores typically consist of pyramidal, tetrahedral, kagom e or textile congurations [2630]. The core members of these periodic core congurations are primarily subjected to axial loading, and thus the predominant mode of failure of the core members is buckling. Buckling dominated failure is especially seen in core congurations with a low relative density, i.e. when the core members are slender. In order to increase the resistance to buckling without adding substantial weight, variants of tubular lattice truss cores [3133] and hierarchical core concepts [24,34,35] have been developed and

Introduction

15

v0 , I

Stage I
(Fluid structure interaction)

Core

Face sheets

Stage II
(Core crushing)

Stage III
(bending & stretching)

Figure 2.4: Schematic picture of sandwich structure subject to a blast scenario

show signicant increase in strength compared to its monolithic counterpart. Figure 2.6 summarises the experimental quasi-static compressive strengths for a majority of sandwich core materials available in the literature today. It is seen that core concepts made out of carbon bre reinforced plastics (CFRP) have the best strength performance for the entire density range. At low core densities CFRP pyramidal lattice truss cores outperform all other core congurations. The CFRP square honeycomb cores and the corrugated hierarchical cores have the best performance in the intermediate density range, whereas the monolithic corrugated CFRP core show highest strength for densities above 110kgm3 . In addition to good quasi-static performance, sandwich structures that are used in military vehicles or naval ships need to have good resistance to blast and ballistic loading conditions, as discussed previously. Several studies have investigated the behaviour of prismatic and lattice truss cores when subjected to ballistics [55,56] and blast loading [17, 47, 5761]. Most studies report an increase in blast performance for sandwich congurations compared to monolithic structures. Square honeycombs cores shows the best out-of-plane performance, corrugated and diamond cores have high longitudinal stretching performance and lattice trusses have competitive performance at low core densities. Dynamic loading scenarios of the aforementioned periodic cellular cores dier from the quasi-static loading case in three fundamental ways that will aect the load response. First, the constituent material of the structure may show strain rate dependence. Second, since the cellular cores are buckling dominated, inertial eects can delay the onset of buckling and/or change the wave length of the buckling mode.

16

S. Kazemahvazi

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f)

Figure 2.5: Schematic gures of dierent core topologies [19]. (a) Square honeycomb, (b) corrugated/diamond core (c) tetrahedral lattice, (d) pyramidal lattice, (e) kagom e lattice and (f) diamond textile core.

Finally, propagating elastic, plastic and bending waves can be transmitted through the core which can aect the macroscopic properties of the structure. Ferri et al [62] conducted a comprehensive study on the dynamic behaviour of stainless steel I-core congurations and found strong inertial inuence resulting in a substantial decrease of the buckling wave length as the loading rate increased. Tilbrook et al [47] investigated the dynamic crushing of stainless-steel corrugated and Y-core congurations. Both core topologies showed strong inertial stabilisation as the loading rate increased, which resulted in substantial increase of the collapse strength and a decrease of the buckling wave length. At impact velocities below 30 m/s, the stresses measured at the front and rear faces of the sandwich were approximately the same. This indicates a state of axial equilibrium as the core collapses. As the impact speed increased, wave propagation eects played a dominant role and the measured peak stresses at the front face exceeded that of the rear face. In fact, the peak stress of the rear face remained approximately constant (and equal to the low speed impact peak stress), while the peak stress of the front face continued to increase as the loading rate increased (up to a certain limit).

Introduction

17

Hierarchical CFRP corrugation

CFRP square honeycomb

Monolithic CFRP corrugation

Pyramidal CFRP lattice truss

Figure 2.6: Experimentally measured out-of-plane compression strength of dierent sandwich core concepts. [2225, 30, 32, 3544, 44, 45, 4554]

Although the dynamic response of metallic lattice truss and prismatic cores have been thoroughly explored, there has been little research done on the bre composite counterpart. In this research the out-of-plane impact behaviour of a prismatic composite core was explored with a potential future application as a high performance and multifunctional core in naval ship hulls. Experiments were performed at quasi-static loading rate, low and high speed impacts. The low- and intermediate speed impacts resembles a loading scenario of a ship collision and hull slamming loads, while the high speed impacts simulate blast loading scenarios. Especially the eects of inertial stabilisation were studied and its eect on the out-of-plane compressive strength of the core.

3 Ethics in Military Research

Each year billions of dollars are invested in military research which is conducted at Universities and in private organisations. How does this research benet civilians and in what way does it develop humanity? Who will use the research results and, maybe more important, how will it be used? These are questions I asked myself before embarking upon my PhD-project. I believe that all science can do good as well as bad, and maybe the thing that will distinguish the good from the bad is the application that the end user of the research chooses. The research done within this thesis is funded by military organisations with primary applications in military structures. The main purpose of this research is to improve the blast and impact protection properties of military structures. It is important to elucidate the fact that the research focuses on protective structures, i.e. research with the objective of saving lives, and not weapons (which typically have the objective of eliminating life). Although a lot of research is primarily intended for military use, history has given many great civilian spin-os from military research. One example of such spin-o is the Internet (Arpanet) which started as an American military research project. The global positioning system (GPS) was originally also developed by the US Department of Defence. The primary purpose was to use it as a delivery system for high precision weapons (missiles). Today the GPS is available for civil applications and contributes in to saving many lives around the world. Another example is the modern radar and spin-o products from the radar research. During the World War II a company named Raytheon Corporation got a contract from the American Military to perfect and mass-produce the magnetron (a gadget that produces microwaves) for ground-based, airborne and shipborne military radar systems. While perfecting the magnetron, the scientist Dr Percy Spencer noticed something very unusual. As he tested the magnetron he discovered that the candy bar in his pocket started to melt. This incident intrigued him and he started to experiment with other food objects and soon he had designed a metal box which was fed by microwaves - the rst microwave oven. By late 1946, Raytheon had led a patent proposing that microwaves could be used to cook food. Although this spin o invention did not save the world, it sure made life easier for a lot of people and the invention serves as a good example of where a military funded project can results in something good for civilians. 19

4 Objectives
The main objective of this thesis has been to improve the structural performance of high speed naval ship hulls. This has been done considering both the dynamic load conditions (such as blast and ballistic impact) and by improving the quasi-static performance using novel sandwich cores. More specically the objectives have been:
Develop tools for predicting the residual strength of composite panels with multiple damages. Investigate the high rate loading behaviour of composite structures and specifically how it aects the notch sensitivity of the structure Enhance the quasi-static and the blast performance of sandwich structures using novel core topologies

21

5 Summary of appended papers

Low weight is one of the most important factors in the design process of high speed naval ship hulls. Lower structural weight enables the possibility of down-sizing the propulsion system of the ship and thus decrease manufacturing and operating costs as well as reducing the in-service energy consumption. Two ecient ways of reducing the structural weight of a ship is by using high performance composite materials and by using geometrically ecient structures, such as the sandwich concept. The Visby Class Corvette, gure 5.1 is one example of an all-composite sandwich naval ship. In addition to low weight, the Visby Corvette hull is non-magnetic, has good surface atness and good thermal insulation, which lowers the radar and infrared signatures.

Figure 5.1: Visby class corvette with a sandwich structure hull consisting of carbon bre reinforced vinyl-ester face sheets and PVC foam core (in courtesy of Kockums)

Naval ship hulls also need to have good dynamic loading protection. Example of dynamic loading events are air and water blasts, ballistic impacts, hull slamming 23

24

S. Kazemahvazi

etc. In this thesis important aspects of dynamic loading of composite and sandwich structures are addressed and presented in the appended papers as follows.

5.1

Paper A

The main objective with this paper was to investigate the notch sensitivity of non-crimp fabric glass bre composites. The notch sensitivity was investigated for several dierent laminate congurations at varying tensile loading rate. Notches were created in the form of drilled circular holes as well as perforation damages from fragment simulating projectile impacts. It was shown that the non-crimp fabrics have very low notch sensitivity, especially for laminate congurations with a large amount of bres in the load direction. Further, the notch sensitivity was shown to be fairly constant with increasing loading rates (up to 100/s). For laminates with a large amount of bres in the loading direction, very small dierence in residual net-section strength was observed between laminates with drilled circular holes and laminates with holes generated from fragment simulating projectile impacts.

5.2

Paper B

In this paper a heuristic approach was made in order to create an analytical model to predict the residual strength of composite laminates with multiple randomly distributed holes. The basis for this model was a comprehensive experimental programme. It was found that unidirectional laminates with holes predominantly fail through three failure modes: global net-section failure, local net-section failure and local shear failure. Each failure mode could be described by a physical geometric constant which was used to create the analytical model. It was shown that the developed model can predict the residual strength of unidirectional laminates with multiple, randomly distributed holes with good accuracy.

5.3

Paper C and paper D

In paper C and paper D, novel prismatic high performance all-composite sandwich cores were developed. In paper C an analytical model was developed to predict the strength and stiness properties of the suggested cores. The model was compared to nite element simulations and showed very good accuracy. In paper D the prismatic cores were manufactured and tested in shear loading and out-of-plane compression loading. Further, the analytical model was used to create failure mechanism maps and map out the overall behaviour of the dierent core congurations. The novel cores show very high specic strength and stiness and are potential candidates as core in high performance naval ship hulls.

Introduction

25

5.4

Paper E

Within this paper the dynamic properties of the prismatic cores, that were developed in paper C and paper D, were investigated. The dynamic out-of-plane strength of an unit cell was tested experimentally in a gas gun - Kolsky bar set-up. Especially, dierent failure mechanisms and their eect on the structural strength was investigated. It was found that cores with low relative density (slender core members) show very large inertial stabilisation eects and have a dynamic strength that can be more than seven times higher than the quasi-static strength. Cores with higher relative density show less increase in dynamic strength. The main reason for the dynamic strengthening is due to the strain rate sensitivity of the parent material rather than inertial stabilisation of the core members. It was also shown that at high loading rates ( 3000/s) the failure of the core switches into a progressive bre crushing mode rather than dynamic buckling and dynamic micro-buckling.

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Introduction

29

[30] H. N. G. Wadley K. Finnegan, G. Kooistra and V. S. Deshpande. The compressive response of carbon ber composite pyramical truss sandwich cores. International Journal of Material Research, 98:19, 2007. [31] D.T. Queheillalt and H.N.G. Wadley. Pyramidal lattice truss structures wih hollow trusses. Material Science and Engineering A, 397:132137, 2005. [32] H. J. Rathbun, F. W. Zok, S. A. Waltner, C. Mercer, A. G. Evans, D. T. Queheillalt, and H. N. G. Wadley. Structural performance of metallic sandwich beams with hollow truss cores. Acta Materialia, 54(20):55095518, December 2006. [33] B.-K. Lee and K.-J. Kang. Compressive strength of tube-woven kagome truss cores. Scripta Materialia, 6(6):391394, March 2009. [34] G.W. Kooistra, V.S. Deshpande, and H.N.G. Wadley. Hierarchical corrugated core sandwich panel concepts. Journal of Applied Mechanics, 74:259268, 2007. ot e, B. P. Russell, V.S. Deshpande, and N. A. Fleck. The through-thickness com[35] F. C pressive strength of a composite sandwich panel with a hierarchical square honeycomb sandwich core. Journal of Applied Mechanics, 76:061004.1061004.8, November 2009. [36] Evonik R ohm GmbH. Data Sheet: Rohacell IG/IG-F, [www.rohacell.com]. 11 August 2009. ohm GmbH. Data Sheet: Rohacell WF, [www.rohacell.com]. 11 August 2009. [37] Evonik R [38] DIAB. Data Sheet: Divinycell HP, [www.diabgroup.com]. 01 November 2009. [39] DIAB. Data Sheet: ProBalsa, [www.diabgroup.com]. 11 December 2009. [40] S. Heimbs, P. Middendorf, S. Kilchert, A. F. Johnson, and M. Maier. Experimental and numerical analysis of composite folded sandwich core structures under compression. Applied Composite Materials, 14:363377, 2007. [41] S. Heimbs, J. Cichosz, M. Klaus, S. Kilchert, and A. F. Johnson. Sandwich structures with textile-reinforced composite foldcores under impact loads. Composite Structures, page in press, 2009. [42] S. Lee, F. Barthelat, J. W. Hutchinson, and H. D. Espinosa. Dynamic failure of metallic pyramidal truss core materials - experiments and modeling. International Journal of Plasticity, 22(11):21182145, November 2006. [43] F. W. Zok, S. A. Waltner, Z. Wei, H. J. Rathbun, R. M. McMeeking, and A. G. Evans. A protocol for chracterizing the structural performance of metallic sandwich panels: application to pyramidal truss cores. International Journal of Solids and Structures, 41(22-23):62496271, November 2004. [44] J.-H. Lim and K.-J. Kang. Mechanical behavior of sandwich panels with tetrahedral and kagome truss cores fabricated from wires. International Journal of Solids and Structures, 43(17):52285246, August 2006. [45] J. Wang, A. G. Evans, K. Dharmasena, and H. N. G. Wadley. On the performance of truss panels with kagom e cores. International Journal of Solids and Structures, 40(25):69816988, December 2003.

30

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[46] Y.-H.Lee, B.-K. Lee, I. Jeon, and K.-J. Kang. Wire-woven bilk kagome truss cores. Acta Materialia, 55(18):60846094, October 2007. [47] M. T. Tilbrook, D. D. Radford, V. S. Deshpande, and N. A. Fleck. Dynamic crushing of sandwich panels with prismatic lattice cores. International Journal of Solids and Structures, 44(18-19):61016123, September 2007. [48] M. Zupan, V. S. Deshpande, and N. A. Fleck. The out-of-plane compressive behaviour of woven-core sandwich plates. European Journal of Mechanics - A / Solids, 23(37):411 421, May-June 2004. [49] Plascore Incorporated. Data Sheet: PAMG-XR1 5056 Aluminium Honeycomb, [www.plascore.com]. 01 November 2009. [50] Plascore Incorporated. Data Sheet: PN1 Commercial Grade Aramid Fiber Honeycomb, [www.plascore.com]. 01 November 2009. [51] E. Koza, M. Leonowicz, S. Wojciecjowski, and F. Simancik. Compressive strength of aluminium foams. Materials Letters, 58:132135, 2003. [52] K. Y. G. McCullough, N. A. Fleck, and M. F. Ashby. Uniaxial stress-strain behavior of aluminium alloy foams. Acta Materialia, 47(8):23232330, 1999. [53] M. Zupan, C. Chen, and N. A. Fleck. The plastic collapse and energy absorption capacity of egg-box panels. International Journal of Mechanical Sciences, 45(5):851 871, May 2003. [54] M. Kintscher, L. K arger, A. Wetzel, and D. Hartung. Stiness and failure behaviour of folded sandwich cores under combined transverse shear and compression. Composites: Part A, 38:12881295, 2007. [55] D.D. Radford C.J. Yungwirth, M. Aronsson, and H.N.G. Wadley. Experimental assessment of the ballistic response of composite pyramidal lattice truss structures. Composites Part B: Engineering, 39:556569, 2007. [56] J.H. OConnor C.J. Yungwirth, H.N.G. Wadley, A.J. Zakraysek, and V.S. Deshpande. Impact response of sandwich plates with a pyramidal lattice core. International journal of impact engineering, 35:920936, 2007. [57] D.D. Radford H.J. Rathbun, M.Y. He Z. Xue, J. Yang, N.A. Fleck V.S. Deshpande, J.W. Hutchinson, F.W. Zok, and A.G. Evans. Performance of metallic honeycomb-core sandwich beams under shock loading. International journal of solids and structures, 43:17461763, 2006. [58] V.S. Deshpande V. Rubino and N.A. Fleck. The dynamic response of clamped rectangular y-frame and corrugated core. European Journal of Mechanics, 28:1424, 2009. [59] V.S. Deshpande V. Rubino and N.A. Fleck. The dynamic response of end-clamped sandwich beams with a y-frame or corrugated core. International journal of impact engineering, 35:829944, 2008. [60] V.S. Deshpande D.D. Radford, G.J. McShane and N.A. Fleck. Dynamic compressive response of stainless-stell square honeycombs. Journal of applied mechanics, 74:658 667, 2007.

Introduction

31

[61] H.N.G. Wadley K.P. Dharmasena, D.T. Queheillalt, P. Dudt, D. Knight Y. Chen, A.G. Evans, and V.S. Deshpande. Dynamic compression of metallic sandwich structures during planar impulsive loading in water. European Journal of Mechanics, 29:5667, 2010. [62] E. Ferri, E. Antinucci, M. Y. He, J. W. Hutchinson, F. W. Zok, and A. G. Evans. Dynamic buckling of impulsively loaded prismatic cores. Journal of Mechanics of Materials and Structures, 1(8):13451365, 2006.

Division of work between authors

Paper A
Kazemahvazi planned and conducted the experimental programme and the following analysis. The paper was written by Kazemahvazi with support from Zenkert and Burman. Burman presented the paper at ICCM16, Kyoto (Japan).

Paper B
Kazemahvazi and Kiele performed the experiments. Kazemahvazi made the analysis and modelling. Kazemahvazi wrote the paper with support from Zenkert.

Paper C
Kazemahvazi made the analysis and modelling with support from Zenkert. Kazemahvazi wrote the paper with support from Zenkert.

Paper D
Kazemahvazi and Tanner performed the experiments. Kazemahvazi made the analysis and modelling. Kazemahvazi wrote the paper with support from Zenkert.

Paper E
Kazemahvazi manufactured the specimens. Kazemahvazi and Russell performed the experiments. Kazemahvazi and Russell made the analysis with support from Deshpande. Kazemahvazi wrote the paper with support from Zenkert, Russell and Deshpande.

33

Part II

Appended papers

35