Low-Velocity Impact Response of Discontinuous Kirigami Cruciform Sandwich Panel

Cruciform structures have desirable energy absorption capacity. However, the engineering application is limited by the difficulties in the manufacturing process. In this paper, a kirigami approach is introduced to simplify the manufacturing process. Based on the kirigami strategy, a structure referred to as a discontinuous kirigami cruciform sandwich panel (DKC), is investigated to validate the mechanical performance in energy absorption. Experiments and numerical simulations were carried out to investigate the impact resistance of DKC under four levels of impact energy and the energy-absorption performance is evaluated by comparing to a typical energy-absorption device, pyramidal truss sandwich panel (PT). In order to reduce the initial impact force and the displacement of the bottom surface on the protected objective, the DKC is further optimized by introducing an additional cutout at the opposite end in each component plate. With the new design, the displacement of the bottom surface on the sandwich structure is reduced by 13.9%, together with a decrease of impact peak force and an increase of energy absorption.