Parametric Study of Foam-filled Trapezoidal Sandwich Beam

Abstract

Foam-filled trapezoidal sandwich structure provides high stiffness-to-weight ratio. There exists limited research on identifying the best configuration through parametric study but instead were focused on creating novel structures. The aim is to employ numerical approach through finite element analysis (FEA) to establish the key parameters which includes the core geometry, core material, fibre orientation, ply thickness, foam-filling, and foam density under quasi-static compression. The change from aluminium core to woven CFRP core with [0°/0°/0°/0°] layup increases the peak load and specific energy absorption (SEA) to 62.4 kN and 7.76 kJ/kg respectively. A ply thickness of 2.5 mm provides the highest SEA of 20 kJ/kg when measured at 80% peak load. The 90° corrugation angle exhibits SEA of 11.16 kJ/kg at 4 mm displacement which is approximately double that of 45° angle. The best core height is 9.85 mm associated with SEA of 8.55 kJ/kg compared to increased heights. Foam-filling with aluminium foam of density 500 kg/m³ increases SEA by 36.68%, 32.82%, and 121.37% when compared to summation of pure foam and empty corrugated core, pure foam core, and empty corrugated core respectively, which switching to a foam density of 1100 kg/m³ yields a SEA of 9.62 kJ/kg, an 85.71% increase.