Compressive and lamination strength of honeycomb sandwich panels with strain energy calculation from ASTM standards

Abstract

The experiments were designed and performed to find the material properties of honeycomb sandwich panels and to find the difference in properties between aluminium and of glass fibre facing honeycomb sandwich panels, so as to get a path for consideration of panel containing maximum stiffness to weight ratio which is the main idea behind material selection for a spacecraft/satellite structure. Flatwise and edgewise compressive tests were performed on aluminium and glass fibre facing honeycomb sandwich panels of different core thickness to investigate the out-of-plane and in-plane compressive strength. The strain energy and the critical stress were calculated in one of the compression mode. Another set of experiments was performed to find the lamination strength of bond used for joining facing and core of honeycomb sandwich panels. Again the tests were performed on both facing types of sandwich panels to check the difference in strength with the change in core thickness and facing type of the honeycomb sandwich panel. Different ASTM standards for testing honeycomb sandwich panels were used.