Flexural behaviour of glue-laminated fibre composite sandwich beams

Abstract

This study involved experimental investigation onto the flexural behaviour of glue-laminated fibre composite sandwich beams with a view of using this material for structural beams. Composite sandwich beams with 1, 2, 3, and 4 composite sandwich panels glued together were subjected to 4-point static bending test in the flatwise and edgewise positions to evaluate their stiffness and strength properties. The results showed that the composite sandwich beams in the edgewise position failed with 25% higher bending strength but have 7% lower bending stiffness than beams in the flatwise position. The results however indicated that the bending stiffness of flatwise specimens converges to that of the edgewise specimens with increasing laminations. More importantly, the specimens in the edgewise position failed with greater ductility due to progressive failure of the fibre composite skins while the specimens in the flatwise position failed in a brittle manner due to debonding between the skin and core. Wrapping the glue-laminated sandwich beams with one layer of tri-axial glass fibres did not prove to be effective. Overall, it has been demonstrated that the glue-laminated sandwich beams exhibited better performance than the individual composite sandwich beams.