Numerical Studies on Dynamic Responses of Honeycomb Sandwich Plate Under Slamming Loadings

When ships travel with high speed in rough sea, the hull may be subjected to impact loading from water, and the phenomenon of slamming will appear. It may produce large slamming force which can lead to severe damages on the local structures of the ship, sometimes may cause accident. The honeycomb sandwich structure is one kind of lightweight structures, and possesses excellent performance on energy absorption. Hence honeycomb sandwich structure has great application prospect in impact protection. In this paper, based on Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) method, the fluid-solid interaction numerical simulation model on aluminum honeycomb sandwich plates (AHSPs) is established, and the characteristics of slamming loads and structural responses are analyzed. Meanwhile, the accuracy of the numerical simulation has been verified by comparing the slamming pressure and permanent deflection of the numerical simulation with those of the slamming experiment. Based on the numerical method, the influence of the μ (face sheet thickness ratio) on slamming load and dynamic structural responses is investigated. The relationship between slamming pressure, structural responses and energy absorption with μ is analyzed. Results show that, with the increase of μ, the deformation of the front sheet and the honeycomb decrease gradually, while the deformation of the back sheet increases gradually. In terms of energy absorption, as μ increases, the front sheet increases gradually, while the back sheet and the honeycomb decrease gradually. Besides, the peak value of slamming pressure increases linearly with the increase of μ. Therefore, the proper decrease of μ can reduce the plastic deformation of AHSPs. The studies in this paper can provide reference for the design of ship structures suffering from slamming loads and improve the structural safety.