In the current study, a new approach was shown to develop an innovative loadcarrying and energy absorbing structure which can fulfill the requirements in the fields of automotive, defense and aerospace. Two different topics which have been in great demand in the recent times were combined: sandwich structures and bio-inspiration. Balanus which is a barnacle living along the seashores and on the ships’ surfaces was taken under examination to design a novel sandwich structure core geometry. The designed geometry was manufactured with deep drawing process. The sandwich structures were produced with different face sheets using a pattern to ensure the repeatability of the crushing tests. Firstly, the advantage of the bio-inspired core over the conventional core geometries was shown with a numerical study. Then, the crushing tests were conducted at both quasi-static and dynamic loading rates. Further, the effects of foam filling, confinement, inertia and strain rate sensitivity on the crashworthiness performance of the proposed structure were investigated. In addition to the experimental studies, numerical analyses were also performed using LS-DYNA 971. In the numerical studies, manufacturing process of the core geometry was also modeled to count in the residual stress/strain so that a good proximity was obtained between the experimental and numerical results. Moreover, the penetration and perforation behaviors were inspected. Utility of the proposed geometry where a high resistance is needed against dynamic crushing was demonstrated. Finally, several suggestions were proposed for the future works to elaborate the present study.