Failure mode maps of natural and synthetic fiber reinforced composite sandwich panels

VITALE, JUAN PABLO; FRANCUCCI, GASTON; ARIEL L. STOCCHI

Buenos Aires

Conferencia; 6th International Conference on Science and Technology of Composites Materials, COMAT 2015; 2015

Instituto de Tecnología en Polímeros y Nanotecnología (ITPN), UBA-CONICET

The demand for bigger, faster and lighter vehicles has increased the importance of efficient structural arrangements.For these reasons, sandwich structures represent a viable candidate for lightweight design. The critical failure mode and the corresponding failure load depend on the properties of the face and core materials, on the geometry of the structure and on the loading arrangement. These failure modes were investigated for several sandwich configurations. Equations describing the load at which failure occurs for each possible failure mode were used for a sandwich beam with face and core materials that yield plastically and were developed for other core configurations. With that information it is possible to build a failure mode map, with axes of core relative density and the ratio of face thickness to span length, which, for a given loading configuration and a set of core materials, shows the predominant failure mode for any possible beam design.