Since composite sandwich structures are susceptible to low-velocity impact damage,a thorough characterization of the loading and damage process during impact is important.In the present paper,the low-velocity impact response of carbon fiber composites lattice structures is investigated by experimental and numerical methods.Impact tests on composite plates are performed using an instrumented drop-weight machine(Instron 9250HV)and a new damage mode is observed.A three-dimensional finite element model is built by ABAQUS/Explicit and user subroutine(VUMAT)to predict the peak loading and simulate the complicated damage problem.The numerical predictions are in good agreement with the experimental results.
Free vibration problems of lattice sandwich beams under several typical boundary conditions are investigated in the present paper. The lattice sandwich beam is transformed to an equivalent homogeneous three-layered sandwich beam. Unlike the traditional analytical model in which the rotation angles of the face sheets and the core are assumed the same, different rotation angles are considered in this paper to characterize the real response of sandwich beams. The analytical solutions of the natural frequencies for several typical boundary conditions are obtained. The effects of material properties and geometric parameters on the natural frequencies are also investigated.