Experimental study on flexural performance of tooth-plate-glass-fiber hybrid sandwich beams

The hybrid sandwich structure consistes of tooth-plate-glass-fiber facesheets and a foam core. Tooth plate was connected with foam core through tooth nails. Tooth-plate-glass-fiber hybrid sandwich beams were made by vacuum assisted resin transfer molding. Compared with the normal sandwich structures, the failure mode and flexural performance with different spans and core densities were investigated by three-point bending tests. Meanwhile, the influence of the tooth plate on the interfacial property was also studied. The test results show that in the case of foam core density of 35 kg/m³、80 kg/m³ and 150 kg/m³, the ultimate bending strength increases by 168%, 211% and 258%, respectively, compared with the normal sandwich beams and the interfacial shear strength are 0.09 MPa、0.21 MPa and 0.45 MPa in turn. With the change of core density and span, the structures mainly occur two kinds of failure modes, which are core shear and core indentation. The tooth plate suppresses shear failure effectively. In addition, the analytical model used to predict the ultimate bearing capacity of specimen was proposed. The calculated results are in good accordance with the experimented results.