HIGHER EDUCATION ON SANDWICH STRUCTURES

摘要

Since the beginning of the 70's, research, development and applications of fibre composite structures has matured and found acceptance as an academic subject. The educational effort, both undergraduate and graduate, has been growing steadily world-wide and courses and programmes on the mechanics, design and manufacturing of composites structures can now be found at many universities. One obstacle for further development and use of sandwich structures has commonly been attributed to the lack of education, experience and confidence in this structural concept. Sandwich structures, as a subject on its own, has not yet found widespread acceptance and is only taught as separate courses in rather few places. The present paper describes the background, development, current status and future for higher education efforts on sandwich structures at KTH. Lessons learned over the past 10 years are given and suggestions for the design of a curriculum is presented. In the latter, sandwich materials and theory will be taught in the framework of design. Since sandwich structures inherently involve many design parameters, e.g., material type and thickness of both face and core materials, the design is well suited for optimisation methods to be applied. The paper addresses undergraduate education rather than an appropriate syllabus for graduate courses.