On crushing characteristics of hybrid sandwich aluminum-cardboard panels reinforced with glass fiber composite rods

Abstract

This paper explores crashworthiness properties of different configurations of stacked aluminumcardboard panels reinforced with braided glass fiberepoxy rods manufactured using a tubular braiding machine through quasi-static compression tests. Compression tests are performed on five different hybrid structures involving two layers of cardboard with varying number and stacking configuration of aluminum supports compared with two-layer cardboard panels maintaining five rods in each layer for all cases. The results show that two-layer cardboard panels reinforced with rods have poor crushing performance due to instability of the rods in the adjacent cardboard layers. Moreover, considering crushing performance and weight, panels with one aluminum support in between cardboard layers perform the best, because the load exerted on each rod is transferred to the aluminum support, and then transferred uniformly to the adjacent rods ensuring stability and progressive crushing behavior. When this stacking sequence is repeated in panels of increased thickness with three and four layers of cardboard and two and three layers of aluminum, respectively, crushing stability is reduced due to the relatively small surface area of the panels. In addition, increasing the panel area for a given number of layers and rods does not negatively affect the crushing stability of the panels.