Experimental investigation on c honeycomb core sandwich composites filled with energy absorbing materials

Abstract

Sandwich composite structures are a special kind of composite materials, which have been widely utilized in engineering and structural application especially in aerospace, spacecraft, naval, marine vehicles, automobiles and other light weight structures due to their high stiffness, more loading capacity, and energy absorption capacity. They are used not only to reduce the weight and cost but also to increase the structural performance. A typical sandwich composite is composed of two thin and strong face sheets separated from a lightweight core. Apart from their bending stiffness, strength, low specific weight and low thermal conductivity, they also possess outstanding crash worthiness, thermal insulation and acoustic damping. Due to increasing global competition, virtually all industries depend on the integrity and reliability provided by lightweight sandwich structure that has high specific strength, flexural stiffness and capable of absorbing high energy than the existing composite structures.In this study, hybrid fiber (70 % of carbon and 30 % of E glass) honeycomb core sandwich panels filled with energy absorbing materials such as Rohacell, Wheat husk and Polyurethane foam (PUF) are fabricated by vacuum bag moulding technique. The influence of energy-absorbing materials is studied under different behavioural tests such as flatwise compression, edgewise compression, three-point bending, Charpy impact, low velocity impact and vibrational analysis as per the ASTM standards. To analyse the damaged surface of the sandwich specimens, image-processing technique is executed by using MATLAB 2016 A newline