Impulsive loading of clamped monolithic and sandwich beams over a central patch

An analytical model is developed for the response of clamped monolithic and sandwich beams subjected to impulse loading over a central loading patch. A number of topologies of sandwich core are investigated, including the honeycomb core, pyramidal core, prismatic diamond core and metal foam. The various cores are characterised by their dependencies of through-thickness compressive strength and longitudinal tensile strength upon relative density. Closed-form expressions are derived for the deflection of the beam when the ratio r of length of loading patch to the beam span exceeds 0.5. In contrast, an ordinary differential equation needs to be solved numerically for the choice r<0.5. Explicit finite element calculations show that most practical shock loadings can be treated as impulsive and the accuracy of the impulsive analytical predictions is confirmed. The analytical formulae are employed to determine optimal geometries of the sandwich beams that maximise the shock resistance of the beams for a given mass. The optimisation reveals that sandwich beams have a superior shock resistance relative to monolithic beams of the same mass, with the prismatic diamond core sandwich beam providing the best performance. Further, the optimal sandwich beam designs are only mildly sensitive to the length of the loading patch.