Honeycomb sandwich panels are becoming increasingly popular for their high strength-to-weight ratio and high stiffness-to-weight ratio properties for structural applications under distributed loads and display of good energy-absorbing capacity. The honeycomb cored panels also exhibit good fatigue resistance and thermal & acoustic isolation properties.
Airport runway pavement is required to have high performance and greater reliability. The pavement life can be enhanced by using better energy absorbing layers for construction. In this research, the applicability of sandwich structures as energy absorbing pads for the pavement is evaluated for high performance characteristics.
First, the static load carrying capacity of honeycomb cored panel is computed by Finite Element (FE) simulation and is compared to that of a tetrahedral and 3D-kagome core for ascertaining the maximum compressive strength. A similar comparison is also done for evaluating the maximum energy absorption capacity under dynamic impact loading. The optimized geometry of the honeycomb sandwich model is then analyzed subject to aircraft loading. The honeycomb sandwich model is subject to an in motion rigid plate with the acceleration-time profile of that an actual landing gear to mimic the impact of hard landing. The results of this analysis is evaluated to examine the behavior and applicability of honeycomb sandwich panels in pavements during the landing phase.

Keywords: Honeycomb, Sandwich panel, Aircraft impact, Energy absorption, Airport Pavement.