Experimental study on mechanical properties of aircraft honeycomb sandwich structures

Abstract

Mechanical behaviour of sandwich panels under different conditions have been exprimentally studied in this research to increase the knowledge of aircraft sandwich panel structures and facilitate design criteria for aircraft structures. Tests were concentrated on the honeycomb sandwich structures under different loads including flexural, insert shear, flat wise tension and compression loads. Furthermore, effect of core density and face material on mechanical behavior of different samples were investigated and compared with analytical and FEM method. Effects of skin thickness on strength of honycomb sandwhich panels under shear pull out and moments have also been considerd in this study. According to this investigation, insert strength and flexural test under different load conditions is strongly affected by face thickness, but compression and tearoff (falt wise tensile) properties of a sandwich panel depends on core material. The study concludes that the correlation between experimental results and the analytical predictions will enable the designer to predict the mechanical behaviour and strength of a sandwich beam; however, applied formula may lead engineers to unreliable results for shear modulus.