THE EFFECT OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF CORE MATERIAL ON THE FLEXURAL BEHAVIOR OF SANDWICH COMPOSITES FOR WIND TURBINE BLADES

Year 2017, Volume: 3 Issue: 2, 1102 - 1109, 01.04.2017

Cihan Kaboglu

https://doi.org/10.18186/thermal.298608

Cited By: 11

Abstract

In this study, three differently-configured sandwich structures were
manufactured with three different core materials: Balsa wood, Tycor and
Polyethylene terephthalate  (PET).
Glass-Fibre Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) skins were used to understand the effects
of different types of core materials on the flexural behavior of sandwich
composites under four point bending (4PB) condition, using digital image
correlation (DIC). DIC is one of the most outstanding techniques to understand
the mechanical behavior of the structure during the test, thus defining any
problematic regions in the structures. The failure mechanisms of the structures
were observed by using strain maps of the structures. The results show that the
sandwich structure with Balsa wood as a core material has the highest
stiffness; however, catastrophic failure appeared in the early stages of the
test. The sandwich structure with PET and Tycor exhibited very similar
behaviour under load.

Keywords

Composite sandwich structure, failure mode

References

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