Integration of Mechanics and Acoustics in a Sandwich Fuselage. Part IV

Until now only the stiffened skin structural concept has been discussed. A different structural concept is the sandwich concept. Sandwiches consist out of layers. The outer layers are called facings and are generally thin and of high density. These facings are supposed to resist most of the edgewise loads and flat-wise bending moments. The inner layer is called the core and is generally rather thick and of low density. The task of the core is to separate and stabilize the two facings, transmit shear between the facings and provide most of the shear rigidity. For sandwich panels no stiffeners are needed. Therefore no mass will be lost in stiffeners resulting in a relative high value of mass per unit area of the skin which results in a better TL according to the mass law. Also the core can be made of a material with high insulation properties (acoustic and thermal). The number of discrete stiffeners can then be minimized, since they are only required at places where high concentrated forces have to be introduced (wing, landing gear, etc.) or diverted (from cut-outs). This can reduce the production and maintenance cost. So it can be concluded that the sandwich concept offers great potential for multidisciplinary fuselage design.