The Effect of Carbon Fibre Orientations and Core Thicknesses on Compression and Flexural Properties of Sandwich Composites

Abstract

Sandwich composite structures are commonly used in different areas such as aerospace, marine, space, architectural structures where high strength and stiffness are required as well as the weight is a critical problem. Mechanical properties of the sandwich panels were affected by facesheets type, facesheet density and dimensions of the core materials. In this study, different thicknesses of PVC (polyvinyl chloride) foams were used as corepart of sandwich panels. PVC foam cores and sandwich composites with unidirectional and biaxial carbon fiber fabric face sheets were produced using vacuum infusion method and strength of the panels which have different fiber orientations were compared with 3point bending and compression tests. Also, the effect of core thickness on core shear stress and flexural strength was investigated by using core materials of different thickness PVC foam. As a result, directions of fiber in facesheets was observed to be an important parameter in face strength. It was obtained that increasing the thickness of the core in the sandwich panels decreased the flexural and compressive strength of sandwich composites.