Experimental investigation on mechanical behaviors of composite sandwich panels with a hybrid facesheet

A multi-functional composite sandwich panel was developed with a hybrid facesheet, which was composed of a quartz fiber reinforced plastic (QFRP) laminate and two copper layers. The other facesheet was made of QFRP laminate. The Nomex (R) honeycomb was used as the core material. The aim of this paper is to investigate the effects of the hybrid facesheet on the mechanical characterizations of the sandwich panel. Four mechanical performances of both composite sandwich panel with and without copper layers were considered, including the flatwise tensile strength test, the edgewise compressive strength test, the three-point bending test and the tensile plate shear test. The experimental results show that all the four mechanical performances of the sandwich panel with copper layers were lower than the sandwich panel without copper layers. The flatwise tensile strength decreased by 26.1%. The edgewise compressive strength decreased by 9.5%. The shear strength obtained from the three-point bending test decreased by 14.9%. The shear strength obtained from tensile plate shear test decreased by 13.7%.