Experimental Investigations of Nano Enhanced Hybrid Facesheets

Abstract

Interfacial bonding, fundamental to glass-fiber and aluminum-honeycomb sandwich composites for their structural performance. The viability and efficiency of nano clay interfacial toughening at the interface between the glass-fiber face sheets and aluminum-honeycomb core will be examined. In this present study, the mechanical behaviors of sandwich panels are experimentally investigated. Four different combinations of FRP composites face sheet (0, 2, 4 and 6 Wt% of nano clay) have been prepared by hand lay-up manufacturing techniques and they have been investigated. The utilization of nanoclay as fillers in the polymer composites has attracted considerable attention due to the improved mechanical, thermal, flame retardant and gas barrier properties of the resulting composites. Because of the extremely high surface to volume ratios and the nanometer size dispersion of nanoclays in polymers, they exhibit improved properties when compared to the pure polymers.