Experimental Investigation and Regression Analysis on Plastic Deformation of Sandwich Panels Made of Reinforced Polymeric Foam under Explosive Loading

In this paper, experimental investigation and regression analysis are investigated on plastic deformation of polyurethane composite sandwich panels reinforced with nanoclay under blast loading. For this purpose, polyurethane sandwich panels were prepared with different percentages of nanoclay and in different densities. The mechanical properties of nanoclayreinforced foams were studied by the tensile-compression test. Explosive shock tube device and C4 explosive material were used for explosive loading. Then, the response surface methodology was used to investigate the effect of significant parameters, the percentage of nanoclay and density of polyurethane foam, on the displacement of composite sandwich panels and to optimize the parameters for minimum deformation. The results obtained from the regression model at 95% confidence level indicate a very good agreement between the experimental results and the values predicted by the model. The high value of the correlation coefficient between the studied parameters and the amount of plastic deformation of the sandwich panel (R2 = 99%) indicate that the proposed model has higher accuracy. Finally, the optimal conditions for achieving the minimum displacement of composite sandwich panels were determined as 1.57% nanoclay content and foam density of 130 kg/m3.