Behavior of Honeycomb FRP Sandwich Structure under Combined Effects of Service Load and Low Temperatures
Publication: Journal of Composites for Construction
Volume 15, Issue 6
Abstract
This paper presents the experimental study about the behavior of honeycomb fiber-reinforced polymer (HFRP) sandwich structure with corrugated cores under the combined effects of service load and low-temperature cycling (ranging from 24°C to ). The potential debonding at the interfaces between the corrugated cores and face sheets because of the service-load condition specific to bridge engineering at low temperatures and its impact on stiffness are studied in this paper. The finite-element analysis (FEA) was utilized to determine the load in the experiment. The experiment consisted of tests conducted at four different temperatures. The load-strain responses were monitored to study the behaviors of HFRP sandwich panels. On the basis of the observation and results from the experiment, this paper concludes that the deflection limit span over 400 can potentially be adopted in practice without incurring stiffness degradation because of interface debonding. The paper also shows that it is essential to study the tolerable size of cracks or defects at the interfaces before applying this deflection limit as a design criterion. The experimental results in this study serve as a necessary supplement to the material tests and confirm that the stiffness of the HFRP sandwich panels at the structural level will also increase when the temperatures are decreased at least up to the service-limit state. Finally, this paper verifies the important role that tensile stress plays in interface debonding and suggests that previous tests may underestimate the actual shear strength of the interfaces.
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Acknowledgments
The financial support to the second writer provided by the National Science Foundation’s NSF CAREER program (NSFCMS-0550899) is gratefully acknowledged. The test specimens were provided by the KSCI, and we thank Dr. Jerry Plunkett of KSCI and Dave Meggers of KSDOT for their assistance. The writers would also like to acknowledge Ken Thomas and Larry Roberts for their assistance with the testing setups.
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© 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Oct 31, 2010
Accepted: May 19, 2011
Published online: May 21, 2011
Published in print: Dec 1, 2011
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