Abstract
This paper presents a experimental study of the strength enhancement under impact
loading of metallic cellular materials as well as sandwich panels with cellular core. A testing
method using 60mm diameter Nylon Hopkinson pressure bars is used to investigate the rate
sensitivity of various metallic cellular materials as honeycombs, foams. Finally, an inversed
perforation test on sandwich panels with an instrumented pressure bar is also presented. Such a new
testing setup provides piercing force time history measurement, generally inaccessible. Testing
results show a notable enhancement of piercing forces, even though the skin aluminum plates and
the foam cores are nearly rate insensitive.