Effects of mechanical and geometrical properties of adhesive and metal layers on low-velocity impact behavior of metal laminate structures

In this study, the effects of mechanical and geometrical properties of the adhesive layers and mechanical properties of the metal layers on low-velocity impact behavior of adhesively bonded metal laminates (ABML) were investigated. The contact force, the transverse displacement, the contact duration, and the dissipated energy were considered as the main structure responses under impact loading. To study the effects of mechanical and geometrical properties of adhesive layers on low-velocity impact behavior of ABML, two different adhesive materials and two different adhesive thicknesses were considered. The results showed that the contact force was more depended on the adhesive thickness and nearly unaffected by the adhesive material, whereas the dissipated energy was more depended on the adhesive material rather than the adhesive thickness in case the overall structure thickness was remained fixed. To determine the effects of material parameters of the metal layers including the yield stress, the elastic modulus, the density, and the tangent modulus on the impact behavior of ABML, finite element analyses were carried out. The results showed that increasing the number of metal layers in a constant total thickness caused decrease of the total contact force and increase of the contact duration and transverse displacement of the structure due to more widespread plastic deformation occurred in the layers. The material yield stress and Young's modulus were the most influencing material parameters on the mechanical behavior of ABML under low-velocity impact loading. The finite element models were well validated against the experimental and numerical results.