Investigation of separation between composite skin/core of sandwich plates under bending loading

The present study focuses on evaluating the debonding resistance property of sandwich structures under bending loading using the experimental and numerical methods. It is worth noting that during the bending loading, the shear stress is increased dramatically at the interfaces as well as the crack front due to mode II loading condition. To consider the effects of this stress on the interface resistance, the sandwich composite specimen containing an artificial pre-crack, is modeled and analyzed in commercial F.E. code. For modeling the progressive debonding in between the face /core interface, the cohesive zone model (CZM) with appropriate cohesive law is used. Furthermore, End Notched Shear (ENS) testing is performed on the sandwich composite configurations utilizing two types of core including the foam core and corrugated composite and used for validating the numerical results.