Parametric study of the flexural behaviour of sandwich panels with flax FRP faces and foam cores using finite element analysis

Abstract

To meet the growing demands for increased sustainability in infrastructure, it is important to consider the use of more environmentally-friendly materials, such as plant-based fibre-reinforced polymers (FRPs). Plant-based FRPs, such as flax FRPs (FFRPs), can be used to replace their synthetic counterparts in applications where the high strength of synthetic FRPs is underutilized, such as sandwich structures. In this study, the performance of one-way sandwich beams with FFRP faces and foam cores is investigated numerically using the commercially available finite element analysis (FEA) software, LSDYNA. The main parameter of the study was the effect of the foam core density on the structural performance of sandwich beams loaded under both quasi-static flexural loading. The main modelling challenge for this project was the selection of appropriate material models to accurately predict the behaviour of FFRPs, which are known to exhibit a nonlinear mechanical behaviour. The results of the FEA models were compared to a previous experimental study on panels with core densities of 32 kg/m3, 64 kg/m3 and 96 kg/m3. This is on-going research and more results will be available at the time of the conference.