In this study, the sandwich structure consisting of novel-3D-printed-polymeric base core was examined in terms of crashworthiness. The designed core structure for energy absorption purpose is inspired by the geometry of the human fingerprint. The fingerprint geometry is a spiral-shaped, asymmetrical and complex structure; therefore, the manufacturing of the geometry is difficult by conventional manufacturing methods. Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) which is one of the additive manufacturing (AM) methods was used for fingerprint core preparation by layer by layer production technique with low-density material. After the material characterization of 3D printed thermoplastic specimens, optimum geometric parameters of fingerprint were determined via experimental and numerical studies by changing the height and thickness. The fingerprint performed better crushing performance compared to other conventional geometries. Quasi-static and dynamic crushing experiments were conducted, and the results were verified with models by non-linear finite element code LS-DYNA. The results showed that the energy absorption capacity and peak crushing force of fingerprint geometry increases with strain rate increment. However, the deformation behavior of the structure under dynamic loads changes and the material becomes more brittle. This is caused by the change in deformation mechanism due to AM and material itself. It was found that the 3-D printed core structure is suitable to be employed at low-to-medium strain rates due to its multi-stage deformation behavior. It was observed that the bio-inspired sandwich structure consisting of 4 fingerprint-core can absorb 10% more impact energy than fourfold individual 3-D printed core geometry, which indicates the promising potential of the novel sandwich structure for crashworthiness applications.