Sandwich structures have been widely used in the applications of vessel industry, where high structural stiffness is required with small addition of weight. It is so significant to think of the effect of the variables in the design process of the sandwich structure for the concentrated loads. This paper describes the influence of design variables, such as core density, core thickness and face thickness ratio, on the strength of sandwich beam. The theoretical failure loads based on the 2-D elasticity theory agree well with the experimental yield or failure loads, which are measured at the three point bending laboratory test using AS4/3501-6 facing and polyurethane foam core sandwich beam. The comparison of those yield or failure loads was also done with the ratio of the top to bottom face thickness. The theoretical optimum condition is obtained by finding the intersection point of failure modes involved, which gives optimum core density of the sandwich beam for strength and stiffness. In the addition, the effect of unequal face thickness for the optimized and off-optimized sandwich beams for the strength was compared with the ratio of loading length to beam length, and the variations of strength and stiffness were discussed with the relative ratio of core to face mass.

Sandwich structures have been widely used in the applications of vessel industry, where high structural stiffness is required with small addition of weight. It is so significant to think of the effect of the variables in the design process of the sandwich structure for the concentrated loads. This paper describes the influence of design variables, such as core density, core thickness and face thickness ratio, on the strength of sandwich beam. The theoretical failure loads based on the 2-D elasticity theory agree well with the experimental yield or failure loads, which are measured at the three point bending laboratory test using AS4/3501-6 facing and polyurethane foam core sandwich beam. The comparison of those yield or failure loads was also done with the ratio of the top to bottom face thickness. The theoretical optimum condition is obtained by finding the intersection point of failure modes involved, which gives optimum core density of the sandwich beam for strength and stiffness. In the addition, the effect of unequal face thickness for the optimized and off-optimized sandwich beams for the strength was compared with the ratio of loading length to beam length, and the variations of strength and stiffness were discussed with the relative ratio of core to face mass.

Keywords: Sandwich structure, Sandwich beam, Failure analysis, Optimization

Keywords: 샌드위치 구조물, 샌드위치 보, 파괴 분석, 최적화