Experimental characterization of thermomechanically induced instability in polymer foam cored sandwich structures

S. Zhang*, J. M. Dulieu-Barton, O. T. Thomsen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to book/anthology/report/conference proceedingBook chapterResearchpeer-review

Abstract

This paper presents a primarily experimental investigation of the instability behaviour of polymer foam cored sandwich structures loaded at elevated temperatures. An experimental setup was designed to induce the unstable behaviour using sandwich beam specimens subjected to four-point bending and by imposing a linear temperature gradient through the core thickness. A wavy deformation of the face-sheet was observed using high-speed imaging combined with digital image correlation (DIC) for the specimens tested at elevated temperatures over 70°C, thus identifying the occurrence of face-sheet wrinkling. The face-sheet wavy deformation evolves to core crushing in tens of microseconds and thereby the high-speed imaging is essential in this work. The experimental results shows that the failure mode of the specific polymer foam cored sandwich beam specimens shifts from face-sheet yielding to face-sheet wrinkling as the temperature increases, and this is shown to agree well with analytical and numerical predictions.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationExperimental Mechanics of Composite, Hybrid, and Multifunctional Materials : Proceedings of the 2013 Annual Conference on Experimental and Applied Mechanics
EditorsG P Tandon, Srinivasan Arjun Tekalur, Carter Ralph, Nancy R Sottos, Benjamin Blaiszik
Number of pages6
Volume6
PublisherSpringer Publishing Company
Publication date2014
Pages103-108
ISBN (Print)978-3-319-00872-1
ISBN (Electronic)978-3-319-00873-8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2014
SeriesConference Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Mechanics Series
ISSN2191-5644

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