Mechanical behavior of rubber-filled multifunctional honeycomb sandwich composite

A rubber-filled multifunctional honeycomb sandwich composite was developed in this paper. This structure was composed of facesheets, honeycomb core and vulcanized liquid silicon rubber (LSR) in the honeycomb cells. The rubber fillings were designed to support honeycomb cell walls, act as viscoelastic dampers and dissipate impact energy functionally. In order to investigate the impact and damping performance of this new developed composite, low-velocity impact and vibration tests were conducted to the fabricated specimens in two groups, with and without rubber filled. Each group had three kinds of specimens with various stacked carbon/epoxy laminate facesheets, [0/90](4s), [0/45/-45/90](2s), [45/-45](4s). Damage areas of each impacted specimen were inspected by ultrasonic C-scan. For vibration tests, displacement response and damping ratio were checked and compared. The experimental results provided a good agreement with our material design concept.