Ballistic impact of metallic sandwich panels with aluminium foam core

Metallic sandwich structures with aluminium foam core are good energy absorbers for impact protection. To study their ballistic performance, quasi-static and impact perforation tests were carried out and the results are reported and analysed in this paper. The results concerned include experimental observations and quantitative assessments, in which the effects of several key parameters, i.e. impact velocity, skin thickness and thickness and density of foam core, on the ballistic limit and energy absorption of the panels during perforation are identified and discussed in detail. A simplified perforation model is proposed to calculate the energy dissipation during quasi-static perforation, and based on the model, a semi-empirical equation is suggested to approximately estimate the energy enhancement during dynamic perforation