Characteristic comparison of energy absorbing and dissipating of honeycomb panel and Whipple structure in hypervelocity impact

To investigate the influence of honeycomb core on projectile debris cloud shape, the energy absorption and consumption of projectile, the honeycomb sandwich panel and Whipple structure are numerically simulated. As results of the simulation, it reveals that the debris cloud shape is approximate ellipsoid after projectile impacted honeycomb sandwich panel and the semi-major axis is obvious longer, while the debris cloud shape is approximate sphere when it impacted Whipple structure. The energy that honeycomb core absorb increased with the projectile broken degree. Most of the energy is attenuated when a projectile impacts the front panel and back panel of honeycomb sandwich panel and the two layer board of Whipple structure, meanwhile, because of function of honeycomb core, the energy absorbed by Whipple structure is more than front and back panel of honeycomb sandwich panels.