The out-of-plane compressive behaviour of woven-core sandwich plates

Stainless steel woven-core sandwich plates of length L, height H and width W have been manufactured by brazing together commercially available wire meshes of cell size l. The out-of-plane compressive response of the sandwich plate is measured for three relative densities of the woven core, and the effects of the plate aspect ratios L/H, width to height ratio W/H and height to cell diagonal ratio H/d are investigated. When the plate is thin such that L/H exceeds about 10, the compressive strength is insensitive to the value of L/H. Conversely, for L/H⩽10, the compressive strength drops sharply with decreasing value of L/H. Analytical models are presented for the dependence of the compressive stiffness and strength of the woven cores upon the core relative density and plate aspect ratio L/H. The models predict that the stiffness and strength are dictated by axial stretch of the individual struts, and scale linearly with the relative density. Good agreement is observed between the measured and predicted stiffness and peak strengths.