Performance of honeycomb sandwich structure with natural fibres fabric reinforced facesheets

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the mechanical behaviour and failure mechanisms of sandwich structures with polypropylene (PP) based honeycomb core and natural fibre reinforced polymer (NFRP) facesheets as a function of facesheets. Flax fibre/epoxy facesheets with PP honeycomb core was fabricated by vacuum bagging hand lay-up technique. The properties of sandwich constitution is investigate by using tensile and flexural test for facesheet and flatwise test for core. Three-point bending (3PB) tests were performed to evaluate the mechanical behaviour of the composite sandwich structures. For the sandwich structures, three point bending test results showed that core shear stress, sandwich beam deflection and panel bending stiffness increased with the facesheet thickness increment. The increment of facesheet thickness show significant increase of bending stiffness but also increase the density of the whole sandwich.