Low-Velocity Impact of Clamped Rectangular Sandwich Tubes with Fiber Metal Laminated Tubes

Fiber metal laminated sandwich tubes are made up of alternating fiber-reinforced composite and metal layers. Fiber metal laminated tubes have the advantages of the high strength and high stiffness of fiber and the toughness of metal, so they have become an excellent load-bearing and energy-absorbing, lightweight structure. Due to the complexity of the fiber layup, it is difficult to establish an analytical model of the relevant structural properties. In this work, introducing the number and volume fraction of fiber layup, based on the modified rigid–plastic model, an analytical model is established for low-velocity impacts on sandwich tubes with fiber metal laminated tubes, which provided a theoretical basis for the design of fiber–metal composite tubes. In addition, a numerical simulation was conducted for low-velocity impacts on clamped rectangular sandwich tubes with fiber metal laminated (FML) tubes and a foam core. By comparing the results obtained from the theoretical analysis and numerical calculations, it is shown that the analytical results can reasonably agree with the numerical results. The influences of the metal volume fraction (MVF), the strength ratio factor of the FML metal layer to the FML composite layer, and the relative strength of the foam on the dynamic response of the rectangular sandwich tubes with FML tubes and a metal foam core (MFC) are discussed. It is shown that by increasing the fiber content and fiber strength of the FML tubes and the foam strength, the load-carrying and energy-absorbing capacity of the rectangular sandwich tubes can be effectively improved, especially by changing the fiber properties. In addition, present analytical solutions can be applied to make predictions about the dynamic response of the rectangular sandwich tubes with FML tubes and MFC during impacts with low-velocity and reasonably heavy-mass.