Shock loading performance of sandwich plates

Lightweight sandwich structures are widely used in a wide range of usage areas such as automotive, maritime, and aviation. The main reasons for the wide usage area are that these structures have high specific bending stiffness and energy absorption capacity. Sandwich structures basically consist of core and face layers. The core structures are the most crucial element that gives the structure selectivity and variability among these essential components. The basis of core structures developed due to numerous analytical and experimental studies for many different purposes and applications consists of porous materials and structures. The usage areas of these structures, which have different advantages than each other, can be selected according to the desired features. Many test methods are used to examine the structural behavior of sandwich structures. One of these test methods is the shock test. Shock tube test machines are invented today to perform shock tests. Shock tubes are test set-up used to simulate real explosions and their effects, often on a smaller scale, or a tool for amplifying and directing blast waves in a model. Within the scope of this thesis, a shock tube experimental setup was designed, developed, and produced, and used to measure the structural behavior, damage, and damping mechanisms of sandwich structures with different material and core geometries exposed to shock waves were experimentally investigated.