ENERGY-ABSORPTION PROPERTIES OF CORRUGATED WEB REINFORCED FOAM CORE SANDWICH COMPOSITES UNDER QUASI-STATIC COMPRESSION

With the increasing numbers of ships and transportation, accidents about collision between vehicles and structures happened, causing the loss of life and property with serious structural damages. It was urgent to install energy-absorption devices for bridges and other structures. A novel type of energy-absorption structure of corrugated web reinforced foam sandwich composite is presented. The composite structure is made up of corrugated foam core materials with biaxial glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) laying in the foam gap and GFRP face sheets by a vacuum assisted resin infusion molding process. Quasi-compression tests were carried out on the corrugated web reinforced foam sandwich composite structure to study the influence of the thickness of the web, of the face sheets and of wavelength on the failure modes, on the load-bearing capacities and on the energy-absorption of specimens. The test results indicated that the specimens with great web thickness and short wavelength were better to absorb energy. In addition, the finite element method was used to simulate the influence of the thickness of the web and the density of foam on the specimens and provided a valuable reference for its application in the anti-collision field.