PSI - Issue 42

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2019) 000 – 000 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect

www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia

ScienceDirect

Procedia Structural Integrity 42 (2022) 284–291

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 23 European Conference on Fracture – ECF23 Abstract Sandwich composite materials have seen a significant increase in use across various engineering fields and applications due to their exceptional mechanical properties, including high specific strength and bending stiffness values. Because of their high strength properties, the use of sandwich structures is preferred in different industries. It is crucial to investigate material properties of novel composites in order to estimate their failure mechanisms under different loading types. In this study, a type of sandwich composite material consisting of Carbon Fibre/Epoxy Facesheets with two different dimensions and a PVC Foam Core was designed and fabricated. The selection of PVC foam for this study is motivated by its wide use in load bearing components in different industries. The sandwich composite material used for the experiments was manufactured by using vacuum-assisted resin infusion moulding process (VARIM) by IZOREEL in Izmir, Turkey. Failure styles of the structure in compression, shearing and bending were revealed by sandwich flatwise tension, core flatwise compression, and sandwich edgewise compression tests. Facesheet bending of manufactured composites have been investigated experimentally. Tensile strength of the facesheets and sandwich material have been presented separately. The detailed formulations and procedures are provided. The obtained results are discussed, and it is seen that maximum tensile and compression stresses in the three-point bending test depend on the direction of the loading with respect to different facesheet thicknesses. © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) Peer-review under responsibility of 23 European Conference on Fracture - ECF23 Keywords: Sandwich Composites; Failure Mechanism; Carbon Fibre/Epoxy Laminates 23 rd European Conference on Fracture - ECF23 Investigation into Mechanical Properties and Failure Mechanisms of Novel Sandwich Composite Material with Carbon Fibre / Epoxy Facesheets and PVC Foam Core Ayse Cagla Balaban a* , Meltem Evren Toygar b a University of Greenwich, Faculty of Engineering and Science, School of Engineering and Built Environment, London, SE10 9BD, U.K. b Dokuz Eylul University, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Izmir, 35397, Turkey

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 02083319319 E-mail address: Ayse.Balaban@greenwich.ac.uk

2452-3216 © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) Peer-review under responsibility of 23 European Conference on Fracture - ECF23

2452-3216 © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 23 European Conference on Fracture – ECF23 10.1016/j.prostr.2022.12.035