Fatigue of Foam and Honeycomb Core Composite Sandwich Structures: A Tutorial

This article is intended to be a tutorial on the subject of fatigue of foam and honeycomb core composite sandwich structures. First, several different analytical models for predicting the fatigue life of sandwich composites are presented. Then representative publications which have reported on the major failure modes in sandwich beams under dynamic fatigue loading are summarized, along with several related publications dealing with static and impact loading. Papers dealing with the effects of loading frequency, environmental factors, and block loading on the fatigue life of sandwich composites are discussed. Finally, recent research on different types of non-destruction evaluation (NDE) techniques employed for failure investigations during fatigue testing of sandwich structures is reviewed. Conclusions and generalizations that can be drawn from the literature are presented along with discussions of areas in which further research is needed.