Mechanics of Composite Sinusoidal Honeycomb Cores
Publication: Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 18, Issue 1
Abstract
Lightweight and heavy-duty fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composite honeycomb sandwich structures have been increasingly used in civil infrastructure. Unique cellular core configurations, such as sinusoidal core, have been applied in sandwich construction. Due to specific core geometry, the solutions for core effective stiffness properties are not readily available. This paper presents a mechanics of materials approach to evaluate the effective stiffness properties of sinusoidal cores. In particular, the internal forces of a curved wall in a unit cell are expressed in terms of resultant forces, and based on the energy method and principle of equivalence analysis, the in-plane stiffness properties of sinusoidal cores are derived. Both finite-element modeling and experimental testing are carried out to verify the accuracy of the proposed analytical formulation. To illustrate the present analytical approach as an efficient tool in optimal analysis and size selection of sinusoidal cores, several design plots are provided and discussed. The simplified analysis and formulation presented for sinusoidal cores can be used in design application of FRP honeycomb sandwich and optimization of efficient cellular core structures.
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Acknowledgments
The test samples were provided by KSCI, and the writers thank Dr. Jerry Plunkett of KSCI and Professor Julio F. Davalos of West Virginia University for their technical contribution and support. The assistance with experimental tests provided by Guanyu Hu is greatly appreciated. Partial financial support for this study is received from the National Science Foundation’s Partnerships for Innovation program (EHR-0090472).
References
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Information
Published In
Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 18 • Issue 1 • January 2005
Pages: 42 - 50
Copyright
© 2004 ASCE.
History
Received: Jun 3, 2003
Accepted: Jul 7, 2004
Published online: Jan 1, 2005
Published in print: Jan 2005
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