Robust Materials Design of Blast Resistant Panels

Abstract

Blast resistant panels (BRPs) are panels that are designed to dissipate blast energy through allowable plastic deformation in order to protect against damage from an incoming explosion. The blast resistant panels considered in this paper are metal sandwich structures that consist of two outer face sheets and a honeycomb core. In practice, materials for BRPs are selected from the finite set of available materials; however, selection of materials places bounds on the performance of the panel. Alternatively, by designing the BRP material concurrently with the product, the material properties could be tailored such that the weight of the panel is minimized while meeting deflection constraints. As a step towards this goal, the properties of the BRP material are defined as uncertain design variables rather than static design parameters in order to maintain some design freedom for a subsequent material design or selection problem. If a material does not exist that satisfies the ranges of material properties identified through the design process, a material design would be needed to specify the necessary component materials and processing path to realize the desired material properties. To maintain the performance of the BRP in spite of the uncertainty in the material properties, the BRP should be robust to variation in the material property design variables. Moreover, because blasts of different impulse amplitudes and duration are expected, the design of the BRP should also be robust to variation in blast pulse amplitude and duration. In this paper, we demonstrate the design of a blast resistant panel that is robust to variation in material properties as well as variation of impulse amplitude and duration. By considering the material properties of the panel to be uncertain design variables, the panel design obtained through robust design methods provides ranges of acceptable material properties for the framing of a subsequent material design or selection problem. Additionally, the impact of the mass per unit area constraint is analyzed.