Dynamic Response of Steel with Aluminum Foam-Based Sandwich Panels under Blast Loading

For decades, there has been a constant surge to protect civilians and the military against uninvited terror attacks. The most outrageous is a blast involving a highly charged explosive capable of destroying an entire region. Under the influence of an explosion, shock waves are generated, which cause a high impact on structures. A lightweight material like aluminum foam shows a better energy-absorbing capacity to withstand shock waves. They have a higher strength-to-weight ratio than steel. The Aluminum foam-based sandwich panel provides optimum shock resistance due to the inherent strength of Al. This paper aims to design and simulate a blast-resistant sandwich panel against charged TNT using steel as face sheets and aluminum foam (ALF) as the core of the sandwich panel. This research uses the nonlinear finite element method to model the system and carry out explicit dynamics simulation to extract the response and study the influence of various parameters. Henceforth, an extensive investigation is performed to demonstrate the potency of the suggested information against blast loading. The midpoint deflection on the face sheets concerning time, velocity, and energy of the face with the core of the sandwich is the characteristic variable for this analysis.