A repair technique involving the containment of local bending of sandwich facesheet by strategically filling honeycomb core cells has been explored to improve the damage tolerance of impact damaged sandwich panels. The experimental results indicate that filling honeycomb cells at the center of the damage region in addition to those at the edge of the damage region produces the maximum benefit. The test data and final failure mode of the repaired specimen under in-plane compression loading indicated that the present repair technique can help recover the undamaged strength of the sandwich panels.

Paper presented to the 3rd Annual Symposium on Graduate Research and Scholarly Projects (GRASP) held at the Hughes Metropolitan Complex, Wichita State University, April 27, 2007.Research completed at the Department of Aerospace Engineering, College of EngineeringMohan Ghimire received the People Choice award at the 2007 GRASP Symposium Non-Oral Division for this paper (Faculty advisor: K. Suresh Raju)