Fatigue Behavior of Sandwich Foam Core Materials: Comparison of Different Core Materials

摘要

Sandwich technology offers a wide range of advantages compared to monolithic construction. Weight vs. stiffness is the key factor why composite sandwich technology is used in a rapidly growing number of applications. However, long term behavior of sandwich construction is a major concern for dynamically loaded applications such as railcars, high speed marine vessels, aerospace applications and wind turbine blades. The paper describes and concludes in a test series, carried out at the Royal Institute of Technology KTH in Stockholm where X-PVC, PEl and PMI cored sandwich beams were fatigue tested in a four-point bending test rig. Fracture loads, displacements, shear strengths and S/N diagrams of the aforementioned sandwich beams have been determined. Loads were chosen to achieve fatigue fracture between 1000 and five million load cycles. After five million cycles the specimens were tested for the residual shear strength using static testing according ASTM C393-62.