Investigation on the ballistic impact response and energy absorption characteristics of CFRP/aluminum honeycomb sandwich panel multi-layer structures

This paper models the space debris target plate as a multi-layer structure of CFRP/aluminum honeycomb sandwich panels. The harpoon capture of space debris was investigated through ground experiments and numerical simulations. Ballistic tests were conducted to determine the damage modes and ballistic limit velocities of both contacted and spaced CFRP/aluminum honeycomb sandwich panels. The results indicate that, due to differences in stress wave propagation, reflection, and energy dissipation mechanisms across multi-layer structures, the ballistic limit velocity of the contacted target plate was 4.7 % higher than that of the spaced target plate. Subsequently, a finite element model of the multi-layer structure target plate was developed using a user-defined VUMAT subroutine in ABAQUS to simulate in detail the impact response, damage evolution, and energy absorption processes of the target plate. The results indicate that the impact point location of the harpoon has a limited effect on velocity decay and energy absorption. Additionally, the front and rear sides of the target plate exhibit distinctly different damage characteristics: regular hole expansion on the front side and fiber tearing with delamination on the rear side. Regarding energy absorption, variations in impact velocity have a minimal effect on the total energy absorption. The contacted target plate absorbs significantly more energy than the spaced target plate, with over 85% of the energy absorption occurring during the penetration of the Al2024 aluminum alloy sheet by the harpoon. The proportion of energy absorption in different phases remained stable, with changes in impact velocity having little effect on the energy absorption ratio in each phase.