Evaluation of Bending Rigidity of CFRP Skin-Foamed Core Sandwich Beams

Bending tests of a commercially available sandwich plate with CFRP-fabric skin and acrylic foam core were conducted primarily by means of a three-point bending. The effects of the span and the radius of the tip of the loading device on the bending modulus and strength were examined systematically. Test data on bending rigidity did not coincide with those calculated from a modified beam theory where the effect of the shearing rigidity of the core was incorporated, although the tendency that the bending modulus increased, the span was the same for both experiment and theory. Based on these results, this paper proposes a desirable data reduction scheme by which the correlation between theory and experiment could be made clear. The applicability of a so-called compression bending test was also demonstrated. This paper is the summary of the original work [Itohiya, G. (1999). Mechanical Property Test Method for CFRP/Hard Foam Core Sandwich Plates, MS Thesis, Science University of Tokyo, in Japanese].