Volume 8 Issue 4 ( December 2021 )

The composite sandwich structures are in great demand in aircraft, automotive and sports industries because these materials possess light weight, high flexural strength and stiffness. In present research paper, initially a composite sandwich structure, having Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) face sheets and a regular hexagon Kevlar® Honeycomb core material, in the form of an equivalent solid, has been modelled. ‘Gibson and Ashbey’ model for regular hexagon double wall thickness honeycomb core has been employed to determine the equivalent orthotropic properties of Kevlar® Honeycomb core. “Three point bend test (3PBT)” has been performed on sandwich panel using Ansys as per ASTM C393-00 standard and ultimate load and deformation have been calculated. Then for experimental result, a composite sandwich has been fabricated and a 3PBT also has been performed on it. The analytical value for deflection has also been found using the ASTM C 399-00 standard. The value of stiffness obtained from finite element model is successfully compared with the experimental and analytical solutions and the numerical model predict to an excellent stage of the static behaviour of the material whilst compared with the experiments.

Keywords: Composite sandwich; Kevlar®; Honeycomb; Orthotropic; Numerical Modelling; 3PBT