Sandwich Structures
Sandwich components are structural light-weight design elements. Usually, sandwich components consist of thin, however rigid cover layers and a layer of light core material of major thickness.
Cover layers of fibre-reinforced plastics possess good properties as to tensile and compressive strength. The foam core material primarily serves as spacer and is used to transmit the emerging shear forces.
Sandwich structures are well-suited for carrying distributed loads while showing very good flexural and twisting resistances.
As fin printouts do not occur sandwich moulds are more form-stable which results in higher quality surface finishes. Further advantages to be mentioned are their low specific weight, high stability, rich noise and heat insulation properties, as well as their high vibration stability:
These advantages become effective with composite parts and panels, because they allow to cover large spans between the supporting points. Furthermore, even and smooth surfaces on both sides of the mould make up a further aesthetic advantage of sandwich structures.
Thin facings can also be very successfully produced from the translucent glass fibre-reinforced plastic HALUSITE®. In combination with, for example, honeycomb structures or aluminium foam, this results in a sandwich structure with outstanding properties. mehr...