Bending performance of aluminium honeycomb sandwich composites vs. GRP: A comparative and parametric investigation
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: • Comparison of bending strengths of aluminium honeycomb sandwich composites and GRP. • Effect of honeycomb parameters on specific bending stiffness has been presented. • The best honeycomb parameter has been proposed to enhance bending stiffness. • The numerical simulation results agree with the experiments. Fibre reinforced plastic (FRP) is commonly used material in aerospace, ship building and automobile industries. However, these materials produce large amounts of polymer waste and are sensitive to moisture. Aluminium honeycomb sandwich composites (AHSCs) are light in weight and possess high energy absorption, high damping etc. These advantageous properties make them suitable to use as a better alternative to polymer composites. During operation the airplane and ship structures are subjected to various kinds of loadings. Bending loads are one of them and frequently experienced by the structures e.g. loads on control surfaces of aircraft during maneuvering. In this manuscript, investigation on the bending strengths of GRP and AHSC has been carried out through experimental investigations. The experiments have been carried out using INSTRON 5900 UTM machine. Elastic properties and density of honeycomb structures are characterized by foil thickness (FT) and cell size (CS). Therefore, effect of honeycomb parameters of foil thickness, cell size and core height (CH) on bending strength have been investigated through experiments. Further influence of individual parameters on bending strength has been presented. It has been observed that the AHSC possesses high peak load than GRP and specific load increases with increase in foil thickness and core height and decreases with increase in cell size. The validation of the peak load for couple of sandwich panels has been done by finite element approach using commercially available software Abaqus and results are found to be in good agreement.
Source: Results in Engineering
Authors: Li Zhao, Arun Rajput, Narayan Sharma, Xudong Shen, Pawan Kumar
Language: English
Subfield: Mechanical Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,940
OpenAlex ID: W7082968846