Protection of Steel and Aluminum Foam Sandwich Structure with Polyurea and Stiffeners under Blast

Abstract:

In current days, sandwich structures have become popular due to their flexibility with design requirements and excellent performance under extreme loads, such as blast. There are different strategies for enhancing the blast resistance of such sandwich structures. Including an additional layer of polyurea and stiffeners are widely used techniques that may enhance the performance of the panels under high-rate loadings. In this study, the effects of polyurea and stiffeners on the protection of a steel and aluminum foam sandwich panels is studied. Effective configuration of the panels with both polyurea and stiffeners are investigated. Here, different configuration cases of the sandwich panels: (a) panel without polyurea and stiffeners, (b) with polyurea applied on the rear face, (c) with stiffeners applied on the rear face, and (d) with stiffeners and polyurea on the rear face are investigated and compared. The finite element models of sandwich panels are developed, where steel facesheets, steel stiffeners, and polyurea are modeled with shell elements, and aluminum foam core is modeled with solid elements. Elastic-plastic, crushing foam, and hyperelastic material behaviors are implemented for steel, aluminum, and polyurea layers of the sandwich panels, respectively. The performance of the different configurations of the panels are compared in terms of the response quantities, i.e., deformation, equivalent von-Mises stresses, and energy absorption. Moreover, the damage patterns with fragmentation effect are depicted for all the considered sandwich panels. The results of the study show that both polyurea and stiffeners are the most effective configurations in protecting the sandwich structures; however, with the same thickness of polyurea and stiffener, the stiffeners show better performance than polyurea against blast load. Furthermore, it is observed that the deflection values across the configurations follow a logarithmic decay pattern.

• Periodical: Advances in Science and Technology (Volume 171)
• Pages: 101-110
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/p-h964R1
• Online since: December 2025
• Authors: Harshada Sharma*, Kusum Saini, S.P. Singh, Vasant Matsagar
• Keywords: Aluminum Foam, Blast, Polyurea, Protection Strategy, Sandwich Panel, Stiffener

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