Part II

Sandwich Constructions
Composite materials used today are often in the form of a sandwich construction,
see Figure 8.5.A sandwich panel is built up by two thin skins, also called the
Face sheet

Honeycomb core
(metal, composite
or paper)

Adhesive

Face sheet

Figure 8.5: A sandwich construction.

facings, separated by a lightweight core. The core helps to increase the moment of
inertia such that the structure becomes ecient for resisting bending and buckling
loads. This is why sandwich panels are being used in applications where weightsaving is critical, for instance in aircraft and in portable structures.
Sandwich designs are also used by nature itself for instance in a human skull
and in plants. While nature often uses the same material in the facings as in
the core and only vary the density, man-made sandwich panels usually consist of
dierent materials, or even structures, in the facings and in the core.A sandwich
construction is built up by dierent face- and core materials and forms, see Figure
8.6 and [35, p.18].

118

Figure 8.6: Sandwich materials and forms.

9. Why use sandwich constructions?

The mechanical behavior of a sandwich panel depends on the properties of the
face and the core mateirals and on its geometry.
The Figure 9.1 shows how the sandwich design works, the so-called sandwicheect.
In Figure 9.2 we see the sandwich-eect in and aluminium-sandwich compared
to solid aluminium plates of dierent thickness.

119

Figure 9.1: The sandwich eect.

Figure 9.2: Aluminium foam used as core material compared with aluminium plate.

120

9.1. Face materials

The face material in a sandwich panel can be made of almost any material that
can be formed into thin sheets. The properties we seek for in a face material are:
high stiness, which gives high exural rigidity
high tensile and compressive strength
impact resistance
surface nish
environmental resistance (chemical, UV, heat etc.)
wear resistance
The most usual type of material used as facings are listed in the Table with a
summary of face materials.
Material
Metals:

Mild steel
Stainless steel
Aluminium Alloy
Titanium Alloy
Wood:
Pine
Plywood
Unidirectional bre composites Carbon/Epoxy
,
(vf = 0.6 0.7)
Glass/Epoxy
Kevlar/Epoxy
Bi-directional bre composites Kevlar/Polyester
(vf = 0.3 0.4)
Glass weave/Polyester
Glass WR /Polyester
Random bres
Glass CSM
(vf = 0.15 0.25)
SMC

(9.1)

where WR=(woven roving), CSM= chopped strand mat, SMC = sheet moulding compound and vf is the volume fraction of bers.
The most used group of face-materials is the bre composites since they have
a similar or even higher strength properties than metals, and are much easier to
fabricate. Also, the possibility to tailor the face materials because the anisotropic
behaviour of the bres oer a very interesting addition. In this way bres can be
placed in the direction where the loadcarrying is most important.

121

Figure 9.3: Core exposed to shear.

9.2. Core materials and structures
The essential property of any core material is that it increases the thickness of the
laminate, without causing a great weight increase (engineering theory shows that
the exural stiness of any panel is proportional to the cube of its thickness). The
purpose of a core in a composite laminate is therefore to increase the laminates
stiness by eectively thickening it with a low-density core material. This can
provide a dramatic increase in stiness for very little additional weight.
Figure 9.3 shows a cored laminate under a bending load. Here, the sandwich
laminate can be likened to an I-beam, in which the laminate skins act as the
I-beam ange, and the core materials act as the beams shear web. In this mode
of loading it can be seen that the upper skin is put into compression, the lower
skin into tension and the core into shear. It therefore follows that one of the most
important properties of a core is its shear strength and stiness.
In addition, particularly when using lightweight, thin laminate skins, the core
must be capable of taking a compressive loading without premature failure. This
helps to prevent the thin skins from wrinkling, and failing in a buckling mode.
The properties of primary interest for the core:
Low density (add little weight to the total weight of the sandwch)
Shear modulus (prevents wrinkling)
Shear strength (prevents wrinkling)
Stiness perpendicular to the faces (prevents decrease in core thickness and
therefore a rapid decrease in the exural rigidity)
Thermal insulation
Acoustic insulation
There are four main groups of core material used,
122

Figure 9.4: Honeycomb core.

Foams
Honeycombs
Corrugated
Wood

9.2.1. Foam Cores

Foams are one of the most common forms of core material. They can be manufactured from a variety of synthetic polymers including polyvinyl chloride (PVC),
polystyrene (PS), polyurethane (PU), polymethyl methacrylamide (acrylic), polyetherimide (PEI) and styreneacrylonitrile (SAN). They can be supplied in densities ranging from less than 30kg/m3 to more than 300kg/m3 , although the most
used densities for composite structures range from 40 to 200 kg/m3 . They are
also available in a variety of thicknesses, typically from 5mm to 50mm.
9.2.2. Honeycomb Cores
Honeycomb cores are available in a variety of materials for sandwich structures,
which ranges from paper and card for low strength and stiness, low load applications (such as domestic internal doors) to high strength and stiness, extremely
lightweight components for aircraft structures. Honeycombs can be processed into
both at and curved composite structures, and can be made to conform to curves
without excessive mechanical force or heating.
Figure 9.4 shows the usual honeycomb shape. The cells can be triangular,
square or hexagonal cells which also can be lled with a rigid foam in order to
123

provide a greater bond area for the skins, increases the mechanical properties of
the core by stabilising the cell walls and increases thermal and acoustic insulation
properties. The following materials are commonly used in honeycomb structures.
Aluminium - Has been used since 1950, several alloys can be used, but in
comparison it is old and heavy.
Glass bre reinforced plastic - Has a high temperature resistance and good
insulative properties, but is denser than other materials.
Kraftpaper honeycoms - impregnated paper with resin to make it water
resistant. Good strength at low cost.
Nomex honeycomb which is made from Nomex paper - a form of paper based
on KevlarTM (Aramid bre), rather than cellulose bres. High strength and
toughness with a low density makes it the most widely used honeycomb
core.The initial paper honeycomb is usually dipped in a phenolic resin to
produce a honeycomb core with high strength and very good re resistance.
It is widely used for lightweight interior panels for aircraft in conjunction
with phenolic resins in the skins.Nomex honeycomb is becoming increasingly used in high-performance non aerospace components due to its high
mechanical properties, low density and good long-term stability.
The gures below give the shear strength and compressive strength in Figure
9.5 of some of the core materials described, plotted against their densities, in
addition to Figure 9.6 which shows prices of some core materials. All the gures
have been obtained from manufacturers data sheets.
Honeycombs can be made with several dierent cell shapes:
Hexagonal
The most common shape is the one shown at Figure 9.4, but this can only be
used in at components.
Overexpanded
The honeycomb in Figure 9.7 is over expanded, so that the cells are rectangular.
This gives better properties in the web direction, but worse in the other, it can
therefore be curved in the ribbon direction only. This shape is used for single
curvature components.
124

Figure 9.5: Compressive strength and shear strength of some of the core materials
plotted against their densities.

Figure 9.6: Comparative prices of some core materials.

125

Figure 9.7: Overexpanded honeycomb structure.

Negative Poissons Ratio
Honeycombs can be made with negative Poissons Ratio, when the cell walls
are inverted as in Figure 9.8.

Figure 9.8: Honeycombs with negativ Poissons ratio.

Flex-core
Figure 9.9 shows a special core shape, which is created by pulling the honeycomb in the opposite direction. It can curve in either direction, so is used for
irregular shapes.
9.2.3. Corrugated Cores
A corrugated core is shown in Figure 9.10.
126

Figure 9.9: Honeycomb ex core.

Figure 9.10: Corrugated core.

9.2.4. Wood Cores
Wood can be described as natures honeycomb because on a microscopic scale
you nd that it consists of closed-cell structure. It has a similar structure to
that of a hexagonal honeycomb, and consequently good mechanical properties.
When used in a sandwich structure with the grain running perpendicular to the
plane of the skins, the resulting component shows properties similar to those made
with man-made honeycombs. However, despite various chemical treatments being
available, all wood cores are susceptible to moisture attack and will rot if not well
surrounded by laminate or resin. Wood is only used in large projects, as it has a
relatively high density, of at least 100kg/m3 .
Balsa
The most commonly used wood core is end-grain balsa. Balsa wood cores rst
127

appeared in the 1940s in ying boat hulls, which were aluminium skinned and
balsa-cored to withstand the repeated impact of landing on water. This performance led the marine industry to begin using end-grain balsa as a core material
in FRP construction. Apart from its high compressive properties, its advantages
include being a good thermal insulator oering good acoustic absorption. The
material will not deform when heated and acts as an insulating and ablative layer
in a re, with the core charring slowly, allowing the non-exposed skin to remain
structurally sound. It also oers positive otation and is easily worked with simple
tools and equipment.
Balsa core is available as contoured end-grain sheets 3 to 50mm thick on a
backing fabric, and rigid end-grain sheets up to 100mm thick. These sheets can
be provided ready resin-coated for vacuum-bagging, prepreg or pressure-based
manufacturing processes such as RTM. One of the disadvantages of balsa is its
high minimum density, with 100kg/m3 being a typical minimum. This problem
is exacerbated by the fact that balsa can absorb large quantities of resin during
lamination, although pre-sealing the foam can reduce this. Its use is therefore
normally restricted to projects where optimum weight saving is not required or in
locally highly stressed areas.
Balsa was the rst material used as cores in load bearing sandwich structures
and is still often used as a core material.
Cedar
Another wood that is used sometimes as a core material is cedar. In marine
construction it is often the material used as the core in strip-plank construction,
with a composite skin on each side and the grain of the cedar running parallel to
the laminate faces. The cedar bres run along the length of the boat giving fore
and aft stiness while the bres in the FRP skins are laid at 45 giving torsional
rigidity, and protecting the wood.
9.3. Adhesives
Bonding of sandwich construction involve bonding of two very dissimilar constituents, one solid and one softer cellular component, and the requirements concerning bonding are therefore somewhat dierent than normal use. The adhesive
must be stronger than the tensile strength of the core. Some of the requirements
of the adhesives are:
Surface preparation
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The core and the face material have to be prepared before bonding, which
involves mechanically or chemically cleaning and sometimes priming.
Solvents
Core materials are often very sensitiv to certain solvents. For instance: Polystyrene
foams are sensitive to styrene (polyester and vinylester contains styrene), while
epoxies and polyurethanes may be used. Similar combinations needs to be investigated before bonding components.
Curing vapours
When curing, some adhesives (as phenolics) give o vapour when curing, which
can give rise to several bonding problems.
Bonding pressure
When pressure is needed to prevent pores to appear, be careful so that the
core will not fail due to the compression.
Adhesive viscosity
The adhesive must have exactly the right combination of surface wetting and
ow. In the case of foam or balsa core, the viscosity should be low enough to
enable the adhesive to ll the surface cells properly and leave as little as possible
trapped air. But the viscosity must not be too low,the the adhesive could be
squeezed out leaving too thin bonding line.
Bond thickness
If the bond is too thick, it adds extra unneccesary weight to the part. If it is
too thin, bonding will not be one properly.
Strength
The bond must be able to transfer the design loads, which means it must have
the desired tensile and shear strength, at the temperatures that might occur.
Thermal stresses
A frequent cause of debonding failures are thermal stresses. If for instance one
side is heated from sunligth it will deform due to thermal expansion. Most core
materials are very good insulators, and therefor it will be a very high thermal
gradient over the bond line. This lead to very high shear stresses in the bond
which may lead to debonding. In such environment, very ductile adhesives should
be chosen (high strain to failure).
Toughness

129

Toughened adhesives which resist cracks better (improved impact resistance)

are on the market. They are ordinary resins which have elastomer particles added.
Viscoelastic properties
Highly viscoelastic adhesives may be advantageous for example where there
are high thermal gradients.
Curing shrinkage
As much as 7% decrease in volume can an adhesive (as polyesters) shrink when
its curing. This leads to high interface (bond) shear stresses and may decrease
the strength of adhesive joints.
Curing exotherm
Most adhesives exhibit an exotherm (curing process gives o heat) curing.
This is seldom a problem in thin bondings spread over a large area.
Dierent types of adhesives are for instance:
Epoxy resins
Modied epoxies
Phenolics
Polyurethanes Urethane acrylates
Polyester and vinylester resins
References:
Alulight products:
http://www.alulight.com/en/products/products.html

Composites:
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~weeks/Composite%20Materials.htm
http://www.netcomposites.com/education.asp
http://www.baltek.com/

Fibres
http:// www.netcomposites.com/ education.asp?sequence=45

Foam cores:
http://www.netcomposites.com/education.asp
http://www.polymer-age.co.uk/techlink.htm
http://www.hexcelcomposites.com

Adhesives:
http://www.hexcelcomposites.com/products/honeycomb/sand_design_tech/hsdt_p04.html

130

http://www.hexcelcomposites.com/products/

Questions
Why are sandwich constructions used?
What kind of face materials are used in sandwich constructions?
What kind of core materials and/or structures are used in sandwich constructions?
What is the essential property of any core material
Is End Grain Balsa used as core material in sandwich construction? If yes, what
kind of products, and what are the advantages of this product? (http://www.baltek.com/)
What kind of core materials are there? Explain the dierence between them.
What reqirements must be taken into consideration when it comes to bonding
sandwich-constructions with adhesives?

131

11. Design Procedures

Designing a sandwich element is very often an integrated process of sizing and
material selection in order to get some sort of optimum design with respect to
the objective you have chosen for instance weight, strength, or stiness. Note
that all material systems have both advantages and disadvantages. Therefore it is
dicult to state some general terms about choosing materials. But, some material
related properties can still be considered despite the choice of material, such as
density of the core material. An optimum design of a sandwich construction is
very dicult to obtain because there are so many dierent constraints that the
problem becomes complex. But, considering the most important constraints and
using a simple optimization technique could be very useful in the design process.
The stiness can be estimated as shown in the previous chapter. The strength
is depending on the failure mode, which is depending on the internal structure of
the sandwich as well as the applied loading.
11.1. Failure modes of sandwich panel
A sandwich panel must have the strength to carry the design loads without failing
in one of the possible failure modes. We have to design against and consider all
the failure modes to be sure of that the structure will not fail. Examples on failure
modes is shown in Figure 11.1. A sandwich construction will fail by the failure
mode which occurs at the lowest load. The optimum design is when two or more
failure modes occur at the same load. The failure modes can be found on the basis
of when the mode occur. Some of the failure modes is described in the following.
The skin and core materials should be able to withstand the tensile, compressive and shear stresses induced by the design load. Also the adhesive must be
capable of transferring the shear stresses between skin and core. The sandwich
panel should also have sucient bending and shear stiness to prevent excessive
deection.

150

Figure 11.1: Some failure modes; a)face yielding/fracture, b) core shear failure, c) and
d) face wrinkling, e) general buckling, f) face dimpling, and g) local indentation.

(I) Face Yielding/fracture:

Face yielding/fracture occurs when the normal stress in the face f equals or
exceeds the (yield) strength of the face material, yf , such that:
f =

Mx
PL
=
yf .
btf d
B3 btf d

(II) Face wrinkling:

Face wrinkling (local buckling) occurs when the normal stress in the face reaches
the wrinkling stress (the local instability stress). Wrinkling occurs when the compressive stress in the face is
p
PL
Mx
=
= 0.5 3 Ef Ec Gc .
(11.1)
f =
btf d
B3 btf d
Hence, the wrinkling load is independent of the sandwich geometry, and is only a
function of the face and core properties. It is the core that has most inuence on
the wrinkling load.
151

(III) Core shear failure:

Core shear failure occurs in a foam with a plastic-yield point when the principal
stresses satisfy the yield criterion. If the shear stress in the core is large compared
to the normal stress, failure occurs when the shear stress, c , equals or exceeds
the yield strength of the foam in shear, yc . The core failure is given by
c max =

P
Tx
=
yc .
bd
B4 bd

(IV) Failure of the adhesive bond (debonding):

Failure of the adhesive bond can occur due to overloading. Debonding (the adhesive between the skin and the core fail) is the most dicult of the mechanisms to
analyze. The adhesive must have a strength equal or bigger than the shear stress
in the bonding line under loading which is almost the same as c max . To avoid
debonding therefore
Tx
ya
c max =
bd
where ya is the yield shear stress in the adhesive. High thermal stresses, fatigue,and aging are some of the reasons to debonding.
(V) Core indentation:
Core indentation is only a problem when loads are very localized and can be
avoided if we ensure that the load is distributed over a minimum area of at least
A

P
,
yc

where yc is the compressive strength of the core.

(VI) General buckling:
General buckling can occur in sandwich constructions due to the transverse shear
deformation. The transverse shear deformation must be accounted for, since this
decreases the bukling load compared with the ordinary Euler buckling cases. The
critical buckling load can be written as:
1
1
1
=
+ ,
Pcr
Pb Ps

152

where Pb is the buckling load in pure bending, and Ps in pure shear, and they are
given as follows
n2 2 (EI)eq
and Ps = (AG)eq ,
Pb =
(L)2
where is the factor depending on the boundary conditions in Euler buckling.
(VII) Face dimpling (local buckling, or intercellular buckling):
Face dimpling may occur in sandwich structures with honeycomb or corrugated
as core material. For a square honeycomb this buckling stress equals
2
tf
for Poissons ratio f = 0.3,
f = 2.5Ef
a
where a is the length of the side of the cell. For hexagonal honeycombs the
buckling stress equals

2
2 !
tf
tf
2Ef
yf ,
when f = 0.3 then f 2. 2Ef
,
f =
2
1 f s
s
where s is the radius of the inscribed circle in the honeycomb cell.
(VIII) Fatigue:
Fatigue is said to cause more than 90% of all structural failures. For the face
material, a conservative way to use the fatie limit under which the material can
undrgo an innite number of load cycles without exhibiting any damage by taking
the allowable face stress yf as the material fatigue stress at the given number
of load cycles and stress ratio. For the core material the reasoning is similar;
substitute the allowable shear stress yc with the fatigue limit. Be aware that
there is not always data for all materials available. Hopefully, more data will be
available in the future.

153

Figure 12.1: Failure modes with their corresponding failure loads.

12. Failure modes and failure loads

The dierent failure modes with the corresponding failure loads for a rectangular
sandwich beam is shown in Figure 12.1.
12.0.1. Failure-mode maps
Failure-mode maps can be used to design sandwich constructions in a way that
will improve the performance of the sandwich due to that no single component is
over-designed. The designer can choose the anticipated failure mode, or making
two dierent failure modes equally likely occur. Also, this is an advantage for
cases where certain failure modes should be avoided.
The dominant failure mode mechanism for a given design, is the one giving
157

failure at the lowest load. A transition in failure mechanism takes place when two
or more mechanisms have the same load. This information can be displayed as a
diagram or map (failure-mode map).The most important transitions we get from
equating pairs of the failure-mode equations are: face yielding - face wrinkling,
face yield - core shear and face wrinkling - core shear. Failure-mode maps can
be constructed from the failure-mode equations that comes out as a result of the
analysis of the dierent failure modes. For more information see [5], p. 363.
Transition equation between face yielding and face wrinkling Face yielding/fracture occurs when
f =

|Mx |
PL
P
= yf .
=
=
t
btf d
B3 btf d
B3 b Lf d

hence the load P is given by

P = yf B3 bd

tf
L

(12.1)

Face wrinkling (local buckling) occurs when

f =
Thus, P can be written as

p
PL
|Mx|
=
= 0.5 3 Ef Ec Gc .
btf d
B3 btf d

P = 0.5B3

tf
L

bdEf3 Ec3 Gc3 .

(12.2)

Putting the two expressions in (12.1) and (12.2) equal to each other, we obtain
that


1
1
1
tf
tf
= 0.5B3
bdEf3 Ec3 Gc3 .
(12.3)
yf B3 bd
L
L
As we see from (12.3) the expression tf /L is in both (12.1) and (12.2) which
means that this transition is independent of tf /L and therefore it appears as a
horizontal line. Also B3 , b, and d appears on both sides, and (12.3) is reduced to
1

yf = 0.5Ef3 Ec3 Gc3

158

(12.4)

and then if we want the other axis to be the Youngs modulus of the core material,
we put

Ec =

yf
1
3

1
3

0.5Ef Gc

(12.5)

which is the transition equation for the failure-mode face yield and face wrinkling.
Transition equation between face yield and core shear Core shear failure
occurs when
c max =

Tx
P
=
yc ,
bd
B4 bd

where
(12.6)

P = yc B4 bd.
Face yielding/fracture occurs when
f =

PL
Mx
=
= yf ,
btf d
B3 btf d

where

tf
d.
L
Putting the two expressions in (12.6) and (12.7) equal to each other
P = yf B3 b

yc B4 bd = yf B3 b

(12.7)

tf
d,
L

we obtain that the transition equation will be

yc B4 bd
tf
=
.
L
yf B3 bd

(12.8)

Transition equation between face wrinkling and core shear Face wrinkling (local buckling) occurs when
f =
Hence,

p
Mx
PL
=
= 0.5 3 Ef Ec Gc .
btf d
B3 btf d

P = 0.5B3

tf
L

159

bdEf3 Ec3 Gc3

(12.9)

Core shear failure occurs when

c max =

Tx
P
=
yc
bd
B4 bd

and
(12.10)

P = yc B4 bd.

Putting the two expressions in (12.9) and (12.10) equal to each other, we get

1
1
1
tf
0.5B3
bdEf3 Ec3 Gc3 = yc B4 bd.
L
Hence the transition equation will be

B4 yc
tf
=
1
1
1 .
L
0.5B E 3 E 3 G 3
3

(12.11)

Summing up:
The Face yield - Face wrinkling transition equation

3
yf
Ec =
,
(1)
1
1
0.5Ef3 Gc3

(12.12)

the Face yield - Core shear transition equation

yc B4
tf
=
,
L
yf B3

(2)

and the Face wrinkling - Core shear transition equation

B4 yc
tf
=
(3)
1
1
1 .
L
0.5B E 3 E 3 G 3
3

(12.13)

(12.14)

The failure modes are illustrated in the failure mode map in Figure 12.2, when
we use the result
2
c
Es
(12.15)
Ec =
s
160

Figure 12.2: A failure mode map for a sandwich construction.

161

Figure 12.3: The transition equations for the combinations of failure modes in a sandwich.

from [5], Cellular Solids, p. 186, 189 and 359, where c (is the same as c ) is the
density of the core, s is the density of the cell wall in the core-material , and Es
is the Youngs modulus of the cell wall material in the core-material , and that the
Poissons ratio c = 1/3. The transition equations for the remaining combinations
are summarised in Figure 12.3
We can ignore bond failure as for most cases the stress for bond failure is
considerably lower than that for face yield.
Exercise
Construct a failure-mode map for 3 point bend sandwich, which has GRP
faces and PVC foam core, and the following properties B3 = 4, B4 = 2, yf =
100MPa, yc = 1.5MPa, Ef = 20000MPa, Ec = 100MPa, and Gc = 40MPa.
162

Hints: (12.12), will be

Ec =

(12.13) will be,

yf
1
3

1
3

0.5Ef Gc

100
1

0.5 (20000) 3 (40) 3

!3

= 10,

(1.5) 2
tf
yc B4
=
=
= 0.0075,
L
yf B3
(100) 4
and (12.14)

B4 yc
2 (1.5)
0.016
tf
=
1
1
1 =
1
1
1 =
1
L
0.5 (4) (20000) 3 (Ec ) 3 (40) 3
(Ec ) 3
0.5B3 Ef3 Ec3 Gc3
Equations

in the mode-map:
tf
a Ec , L =

163