Small Mass Impact Testing of Sandwich Structures

Abstract

Abstract Small mass impacts pose a threat to modern lightweight materials even at low velocities. In this study we describe a test method with a suitable setup to access the materials impact response to masses below 500 g and velocities up to 20 m/s. The setup uses a highspeed camera and adapted semi-automatic image processing algorithms to extract the time-force history of the indenter. The results show good agreement to analytical impact models for hollow core sandwich structures.