New ultra lightweight and extreme stiff sandwich composite structure for multiple applications.

1. INTRODUCTION

Sandwich composite structures have been used increasingly in applications in aeronautics, transportations, in automotive industry, in machine-tools construction, robotics, etc., where high rigidity parts are needed. In most cases, these structures exhibit failures consisting in the connection detachment between core and skin due to impact applied loads. The main objective of the authors' researches is to obtain a sandwich composite structure that can replace the classic stiffening solution with ribs of a panel with imposed weight and dimensions.

2. CRITICAL OVERVIEW

There are a lot of improvements in the construction of sandwich composites especially to improve their impact resistance. For instance, foam filled 3D integrated core sandwich composite laminates with and without additional face sheets have been manufactured using vacuum assisted resin infusion moulding process in multiple steps (Hosur et al., 2007). In order to handle large LCD panels, robot structures have been produced using carbon fibers/epoxy composite material with a polyurethane foam core to increase the …