Surface and honeycomb core damage in adhesively bonded aluminum sandwich panels subjected to low-velocity impact

The effect of the adhesive geometry on the impact damage of adhesively bonded aluminum sandwich panels was studied experimentally and numerically. Both the physical testing and the finite element results show that the core damage depth is dependent on the adhesive fillet height and can be linearly correlated with the dent depth. The focus of the finite element simulation is on representing the adhesive fillet height and the constraint that it …