Experimental Study on The Effect of Aspect Ratio on Flexural Behavior of Aluminum Sandwich Composite

Abstract

Sandwich composites are one such kind of light-weight composites developed for structural and vehicle body buildings etc. Due to their remarkable features such as high specific strength, high toughness and resistance to inter laminar shear strength. In this study, commercially available aluminium sandwich composite (ASC) laminate was considered for investigating its flexural behavior and buckling behavior as it was mostly used for various structural applications. Flexural analysis was done for different aspect ratios in order to analyze the influence of cross section of the specimen and support span on the flexural capability of the sandwich beam. The composite specimens prepared for flexural test consist of length 150 mm and widths 15, 12 and 10 mm. The flexural test was done for support span of 90, 110 and 130 mm respectively. The performance measures of flexural test are maximum bending load, deflection, flexural stiffness and inter-laminar shear stress. The flexural analysis revealed the fact that the aspect ratio appreciably affected the flexural capacity of the sandwich composite laminates. Maximum flexural capacity with bending load around 3.5 to 4 kN and flexural stiffness around 2.5 to 4.7 kN/mm respectively was observed for the sandwich specuimen for the aspect ratios L/t = 30 and b/t = 5. Being a anisotropic structure, the flexural behavior of this sandwich composite exposed as a combination of bending and shear failure. The soft core material and ductile skin face sheets resulted in a combined failure against flexural load in static condition.