Compressive response of plate-added corrugated sandwich structure for enhanced strength and energy absorption

In this paper, two plate-added configurations of the corrugated sandwich structure (CSS) were proposed: the interlocked corrugated sandwich structure (ICSS) and the non-interlocked one (NICSS). Plates and corrugations were slotted and interlocked to form the ICSS, and they were merely assembled to form the NICSS. The compressive performance and enhancement mechanisms of the ICSS and NICSS were investigated experimentally and numerically. The results showed that due to the buckling suppression provided by the corrugations, the specific compressive strengths of the ICSS and NICSS were 80.3% higher than that of the CSS. Due to the buckling suppression provided by interlocking, the energy absorption per mass of the ICSS was 241.6% and 13.8% higher than that of the NICSS and CSS, respectively. Further corrugation angle analysis revealed that when corrugation angles ≤60°, the ICSS exhibited 4% higher specific compressive strength than the NICSS, due to the load-bearing contribution of the corrugations enhanced by interlocking. Among the typical sandwich structures, the optimal ICSS exhibited relatively high compressive performance, indicating engineering application potential.