Perforation resistance of corrugated metallic sandwich plates filled with reactive powder concrete: Experiment and simulation

Motivated by the current development trends in the protection fields towards high performance, low cost and lightweight, this study investigates experimentally and numerically the ballistic performance of a novel hybrid-cored sandwich construction: metallic corrugated sandwich plate filled with high performance reactive powder concrete (RPC). Three different types of target plate are fabricated, including monolithic RPC plate, corrugated sandwich directly filled with RPC, and corrugated sandwich with RPC prism insertions and void-filling epoxy resin. The ballistic resistance of each plate vertically penetrated by a projectile at its center is experimentally measured. Numerical simulations with the method of finite elements are subsequently carried out. Corrugated sandwich plate with RPC prism insertions and void-filling epoxy resin achieves the best ballistic performance, as filling the interstices with epoxy resin improves the structural integrity of the sandwich while confinement of the RPC is supplied by the corrugated plates.