A numerical study on the impact behavior of foam-cored cylindrical sandwich shells subjected to normal/oblique impact

Finite element analysis was used to investigate the impact behavior of the foam-cored sandwich shells under the ballistic impact. The ballistic limit, failure mode of the face-sheet and energy absorption of the uniform/graded core were discussed in this paper. Based on the impact phase diagrams, the effects of several factors (i.e. projectile shape and diameter, face-sheet curvature and thickness) on the normal/oblique impact behavior were analyzed in detail. Results indicate that blunter and larger projectiles, higher impact velocity and thicker facesheets can significantly raise the impact-resistance performance of the targets. In addition, the behavior of ballistic impact becomes more complex as the result of the increasing oblique angle.