Effects of Core Height, Cell Angle and Face Thickness on Vibration Behavior of Aircraft Sandwich Structure with Honeycomb Core: An Experimental and Numerical Investigations

Abstract

The aim of the present paper is to study the vibration behavior of a sandwich structure with honeycomb core experimentally and numerically with different design parameters. The natural frequency and damping ratio were obtained. Core height, cell angle and face thickness were considered as design parameters. Finite element models for the honeycomb sandwich were developed and analyzed via ANSYS finite element analysis (FEA) software. Response Surface Method (RSM) is used to establish numerical methodology to simulate the effect of the design parameters on natural frequency and damping ration. The employment of (RSM) provides a study of the effect of design parameters on natural frequency and damping ratio, numerical modeling of them in term of design parameters and specifying optimization condition. The experimental tests were conducted on sandwich specimens for the validity goal of the previous models created via the finite element analysis. The obtained results show that the natural frequency is directly proportional to the core height and face thickness, while it is inversely proportional to cell angle, Vice versa for damping ratio. Moreover, the optimum value of natural frequency (209.031 Hz) as minimum and damping ratio (0.0320) as maximum were found at 4.8855 mm of core height, 26.770 cell angle and 0.0614 mm face thickness.