Experimental study on the dynamic behaviour of aluminium honeycomb sandwich panel subjected to ice wedge impact

Engineering structures may probably suffer from the brittle fragmenting impact such as the low velocity impact of iceberg collision and floating sea ice in the field of polar ships and marine engineering equipment. In this paper, the ice impact dynamic responses and energy dissipation performance of aluminium honeycomb sandwich panels (AHSPs) are experimentally investigated. Three different impact scenarios, namely ice-AHSP impact and rigid-AHSP impact as well as ice-equivalent weight steel plates (EWSPs) impact were carried out respectively by using the horizontal impact apparatus to study the influence of ice wedge impact failure and energy dissipation on the dynamic mechanical behaviour of AHSP. Results show that the impact peak force and structural deformation of AHSPs under ice wedge impact is smaller than that of AHSPs under rigid wedge impact, which is mainly attributed to the reduction of the relative contact stiffness as well as the ice fragment during the ice structure interaction. The permanent deformation profiles of face sheets are approximately axisymmetric about the vertical and horizontal centerline. With the increase of top face sheet, the permanent deformations of the top and bottom face sheets decease significantly, resulting in the enhancement of the ice impact resistance of AHSP.