Dynamic buckling of foam stabilised composite skin

Presented in the following pages is an experimental and numerical study of dynamic local buckling of skin on foam core. Impact tests on sandwich-type structures with skins stabilized by foam demonstrated that rupture appears by debonding of skins due to a local buckling phenomenon, and that the maximum stress in the skin, obtained at rupture, grows with the increase of the loading rate of the skin. A finite element analysis allows this phenomenon to be analyzed and understood, and a mass-spring-dashpot model is proposed to model the skin debonding initiation.