FEA and Experimentation evaluation of Composite Sandwich panel under Static Three Point Bending Load

ABSTRACT The use of sandwich structure continues to increase rapidly due to the wide fields of their application, for instance: satellites, aircraft, ships, automobiles, rail cars, wind energy systems, and bridge construction to mention only a few. The sandwich composites are multi-layered materials made by bonding stiff, high strength skins facings to low density core material. The main benefits of using the sandwich concept in structural components are the high stiffness and low weight ratios. In this paper, composite panel made of 8 layers of Glass fiber sheets arranged with different degree of orientation is taken into consideration. Gradually increasing loads(1KN-7KN) are applied to check the behavior of honeycomb sandwich composites through three-point bending. The objective of this work is to minimize weight of sandwich panel with respect to bending stiffness and strength.FEA results are compared with experimentally tested results.