Experimental and numerical study of a composite-to-steel joint under bending and torsion loads

A composite-to-steel joint under bending and torsional loads is experimentally studied to determine their strength and stiffness and to calibrate numerical models with respect to the experimental measurements. The steel component is a channel type of structure made of two plates that serve as external supports of an inserted sandwich plate made of composite materials. The attachment of the steel joint to the structure is supported by a bracket. The results include load-deflection and load-strain curves, critical locations and failure loads, with the maximum value of the pure bending and combined torsion-bending moments. The good agreement between the numerical results obtained by finite element method and the experimental ones demonstrate that this kind of numerical analysis can estimate appropriately the behaviour of the structure.