Low velocity impact response of additive manufacturing Ti-6Al-4V sandwich panels with lattice

The selective laser melting (SLM) technique has great potential application in aviation field. And numerous airplane structures, such as sandwich panels made by SLM, need to withstand unpredictable impact load. In this work, sandwich structures and lattice cores with FCC and BCC were made from TC4 and manufactured by SLM. The failure response of those four different structures subjected to low velocity impact was investigated. Low velocity tests were performed on mass drop testing machine. It is found that structures with BCC has the better resistance to the low velocity impact compared with the FCC structures, while the FCC structures have a higher energy absorption capability. In addition to experimental testing, ABAQUS software was used to develop the three-dimensional finite model of sandwich panels-impactor system. The numerical results were validated compared with the experimental tests.