Abstract
Structural weight reduction is one of the main design objectives in structural engineering.
Various concepts have been proposed to reduce weight of military tunnels protecting layers and
armored doors. Among them, application of sandwich sheets which comprise of two face sheets
and low-density core materials which offers a significant weight reduction, high resistance against
blast loads, and the ability to withstand repetitive blast loa ds.
In this paper, numerical investigations were conducted using 3D nonlinear finite element
simulations with commercial ANSYS AUTODYN software. A number of peripherally simply
supported (from all sides) nonmetallic core sandwich panels with either rigid p olyurethane foam
(RPF) or vulcanized rubber (VR) cores were studied. A parametric study was carried out to study
the behavior of these types of sandwich panels against blast load. Different thickness for different
core materials were tested namely 5, 10, 15, and 20 cm. Sandwich Panels were subjected to
different blast charges of 1, 5 and 10 kg TNT at fixed standoff distance 1 meter.
It was concluded that the behavior of high density RPF sandwich panel is better than that of
VR sandwich panel. Using rigid polyurethane foam instead of vulcanized rubber as a core material
decreases the maximum displacement by an average value 48.67 %, for the three different blast
loads, which is good displacement reduction.