Dynamic response of doubly-curved anisotropic sandwich panels impacted by blast loadings

Problems related with the modeling and dynamic response to blast loadings of doubly-curved sandwich panels with laminated face sheets are developed. In this respect, the implications of the panel curvature, of anisotropy and stacking sequence of face sheets, of transverse orthotropy of the core, and of structural damping on dynamic response to time-dependent loads are highlighted. As concerns the blast pulses considered in this analysis, these are related to in-air explosions or of traveling shock-waves. Other parameters, mainly geometrical, are also considered in the numerical simulations, and their implications on the dynamic response are put into evidence. Due to the absence of similar results in the specialized literature, this paper is likely to fill a gap in the state of the art of this problem, and provide pertinent results that are instrumental in the design of advanced sandwich shells operating in a dynamic environment. Moreover, the closed-form solutions developed in the paper, can serve as excellent references for comparison with numerical based solutions. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.