Citation: Wang, M.; Li, Y.; Luo, H.;
Zheng, X.; Li, Z. Experiment and
Numerical Simulation of Damage
Progression in Transparent Sandwich
Structure under Impact Load.
Materials 2022, 15, 3809. https://
doi.org/10.3390/ma15113809
Academic Editors: Alberto
Campagnolo and Alberto Sapora
Received: 29 April 2022
Accepted: 24 May 2022
Published: 27 May 2022
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Article
Experiment and Numerical Simulation of Damage Progression
in Transparent Sandwich Structure under Impact Load
Mufei Wang
1,2,3
, Yuting Li
1
, Haoshun Luo
1,2,3
, Xiaoxia Zheng
4
and Zhiqiang Li
1,2,3,4,
*
1
Institute of Applied Mechanics, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China;
wangmufei1030@163.com (M.W.); zhangshu@163.com (Y.L.); robertl@foxmail.com (H.L.)
2
Key Laboratory of Material Strength and Structural Impact, Taiyuan 030024, China
3
National Demonstration Center for Experimental Teaching of Mechanics, Taiyuan 030024, China
4
College of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China;
zhengxiaoxia@tyut.edu.cn
* Correspondence: lizhiqiang@tyut.edu.cn
Abstract:
Crack initiation and propagation is a long-standing difficulty in solid mechanics, especially
for elastic brittle materials. A new type of transparent sandwich structure, with a magnesium–
aluminum spinel ceramic glass as the outer structure, was proposed in this paper. Its dynamic
response was studied by high-speed impact experiments and numerical simulations of peridynamics
under impact loads, simultaneously. In the experiments, a light gas cannon was used to load the
projectile to 180 m/s, and the front impacted the transparent sandwich structure. In the numerical
simulations, the discontinuous Galerkin peridynamics method was adopted to investigate the dy-
namic response of the transparent sandwich structure. We found that both the impact experiments
and the numerical simulations could reproduce the crack propagation process of the transparent
sandwich structure. The radial cracks and circumferential cracks of the ceramic glass layer and
the inorganic glass layer were easy to capture. Compared with the experiments, the numerical
simulations could easily observe the damage failure of every layer and the splashing of specific
fragments of the transparent sandwich structure. The ceramic glass layer and the inorganic glass
layer absorbed the most energy in the impact process, which is an important manifestation of the
impact resistance of the transparent sandwich structure.
Keywords:
transparent sandwich structure; impact load; crack propagation; impact experiment;
numerical simulation; peridynamics
1. Introduction
With the development of aerospace technology, simple transparent parts have strug-
gled to meet their needs in extreme environments. To improve the impact resistance of glass,
sandwich panels emerged as a new type of glass structure. Prasad [
1
] considered double
cantilever beam and shear-fracture specimens, employing aluminum facings bonded by
two types of adhesives, using the finite element method to analyze its dynamic response.
To improve the bonding properties of sandwich structures, Burlayenko [
2
] carried out
free-vibration analyses of sandwich plates with honeycomb and PVC foam cores containing
single/multiple debonding. It is of great significance to study the dynamic response of this
sandwich structure. Yu [
3
] established a sandwich diffusion model to predict the moisture
absorption behavior of flax/glass-hybrid composites with different stacking sequences.
Funari et al. [
4
] presented a nonlinear approach to investigate the behavior of composite
sandwich structures with transversely compressible cores under static and dynamic loading
conditions. Moreover, Funari et al. [
5
] proposed a coupled ALE-cohesive approach to study
the dynamic debonding in a layered structure. Glass structures [
6
] often undergo crack
propagation and splashing fragmentation as damage behavior under an impact load. The
current research on glass structures includes three parts: theoretical analysis, experiments,
Materials 2022, 15, 3809. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma15113809 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/materials
