Impact Behaviours of Bio-Inspired Sandwich Beam under Continuous Impacts

• Main Author: Tan, Juin Hwee
• Format: Final Year Project Report
• Language: English; English
• Published: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, (UNIMAS) 2020
• Subjects: TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/37182/1/TAN%20JUIN%20HWEE%20%2824%20pgs%29.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/37182/4/TAN%20JUIN%20HWEE.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/37182/

Impact behaviours of newly designed bio-inspired sandwich beam (BHSB) inspired by the woodpecker's head configuration were numerically examined under continuous lowvelocity impact loadings. The newly designed beam contains four main layers, in which carbon fiber reinforced plastic top and bottom skins were employed in sandwiching dualcore consisting of solid hot melt adhesive (HMA) and aluminium honeycomb materials. Innovatively, the solid HMA core was designed in an arch shape. The impact behaviours of the BHSB have been numerically examined by using the finite element software, ABAQUS. Impact loadings were performed in a repeated manner with a hemisphere steel impactor for three impact energy levels of 7.28J, 9.74J, and 12.63J. In all cases, stresses were observed to be mainly concentrated on the impact region while some stresses were distributed to the supports. The new BHSB can resist up to 5 continual impacts at both impact energies of 7.28J and 9.74J but only up to 3 times repeated loads for 12.63J. Besides, impact resistance efficiency index, which assessed the overall impact performance of the sandwich structures, were compared between the newly designed BHSB and the previously designed BHSB. The impact resistance efficiency indices of the newly designed BHSB were found to be 1.31-5.33 times higher, exhibiting an improvement in performance.