Blast response of sandwich beams with thin-walled tubes as core

This paper presents experimental investigations and finite element (FE) analyses of sandwich beams with thin-walled tubes as core that were subjected to transverse blast loads. Three types of cores were studied, namely, closely arranged identical circular tubes, spaced circular tubes, and spaced square tubes. Different masses of TNT with various standoff distances were applied to the sandwich beams. The blast loads were large enough to cause permanent local deformation of the thin-walled tubes and significant global flexural deformation of the entire beams. The FE simulations using Ls-Dyna were compared to the experimental profiles, and an insight into the energy absorption of the local and global deformations as a result of impulsive loading was observed. From the FE analyses, influence of the diameter, the thickness and the number of the circular tubes on the final displacement was investigated.