Materials and Design 52 (2013) 767–773

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Materials and Design

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matdes

Improving the bending strength and energy absorption of corrugated

sandwich composite structure
Jin Zhang a, Peter Supernak b, Simon Mueller-Alander b, Chun H. Wang b,⇑
a
Institute for Frontier Materials, Deakin University, Geelong, VIC 3217, Australia
b
Sir Lawrence Wackett Aerospace Research Centre, School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, RMIT University, GPO Box 2476, Melbourne, VIC 3001, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The bending strength, stiffness and energy absorption of corrugated sandwich composite structure were
Received 7 March 2013 investigated to explore novel designs of lightweight load-bearing structures that are capable of energy
Accepted 7 May 2013 absorption in transportation vehicles. Key design parameters that were considered include fibre type,
Available online 18 May 2013
corrugation angle, core-sheet thickness, bond length between core and face-sheets, and foam inserts.
The results revealed that the hybridization of glass fibres and carbon fibres (50:50) in face-sheets was
Keywords: able to achieve the equivalent specific bending strength as the facet-sheets made entirely of carbon fibre
Corrugated sandwich structure
composites. Increasing the corrugation angle and the core sheet thickness improved the specific bending
Hybrid composite
Bending
strength of the sandwich structure, while increasing the bond length led to a reduction in the specific
Energy absorption bending strength. The hybrid composite coupons with foam insertion showed medium energy absorp-
Lightweight tion, ranging between the glass fibre and the carbon fibre composite coupons, but the highest crush force
efficiency among all designs.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction sheets apart and stabilizes them by resisting vertical deformations

Fibre reinforced polymer matrix (FRP) composites are materials
that have high specific strength and energy absorption as well as
offer other benefits such as part consolidation, styling flexibility,
good noise/vibration/harshness characteristics and good corrosion
resistance, which are well suited for future lighter and more en-
ergy-efficient automotive vehicles [1,2]. However, there remain
great challenges to expand the use of FRP composites in primary
load-bearing structural components for mass production of auto-
mobiles that take advantage of these remarkable benefits. The
main issues need to overcome include the lack of experience and
knowledge in designing with composite materials, high material
costs, and shortage of affordable processes for high-volume pro-
duction of composite components demanded by automotive vehi-
cle manufacturing [3,4]. Lightweight structure is one of the keys to
improving the fuel efficiency and reducing the environment bur-
den of transport vehicles (automotive and rail).
Sandwich structures consisting of face-sheets and cores are
widely used in transportation vehicles and civil infrastructure
due to their high stiffness/strength-to-weight ratio. Sandwich
structures are increasingly applied for providing combinational
bending and torsional rigidity [5] to components such as body pan-
els, floor pans and aircraft wings [6,7]. The core keeps the face-
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 3 9925 6115; fax: +61 3 9925 6108.
E-mail address: chun.wang@rmit.edu.au (C.H. Wang).
and enables the whole structure to act as a single thick plate. Un-
like honeycomb cores, a corrugated-core resists vertical shear in
addition to bending and twisting [8]. As a result, corrugated sand-
wich structures are suitable for applications demanding high level
of through-thickness stiffness while lightweight. Examples include
cardboard fabrication in packaging industry [9–11] and stiffened
aerospace structures [12,13]. In addition, the space in the core of
corrugated sandwich structures provides the ability to incorporate
other functionalities, such as energy storage, sensors, and actuators
[14], offering innovative applications in the aerospace, military,
automotive and building industries [15].
Bending rigidity and strength are some of the key consider-
ations for many primary structural designs. In the case of vehicle
floor design, the structure must provide significant structural stiff-
ness (bending and torsional) to the body structure as it is the back-
bone to the vehicle which additional body structure, powertrain
and suspension modules attach [16]. Lightweighting the floor
structure plays a major role in achieving the overall lightweight
of a vehicle [17]. Further to the lightweight and stiffness require-
ments, the survivability of the passenger in a motor vehicle during
an accident is a critical consideration. Meeting this requirement
demands the structures having a high level of crash resistance
and energy dissipation ability. Energy absorbing components are
required to allow maximum deformation and energy dissipation
during a crash by reducing the impact force and momentum that
are transferred to the chassis and hence the enclosed passenger

0261-3069/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.matdes.2013.05.018
768 J. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 52 (2013) 767–773

Fig. 1. Geometry of the corrugated sandwich composite coupon.

[18,19]. This paper presents a study of the energy absorbing perfor-

mance of corrugated sandwich structures of various designs under
compression perpendicular to the outer skin.
Cost reduction remains the paramount challenge facing auto-
mobile manufacturers while fuel economy and technology trans-
formation are becoming more important [20]. To optimise
functionality and cost, this paper also presents an investigation
of hybridisation of glass fibres and carbon fibres as a means to
reducing the material costs. The incorporation of carbon fibres into
glass fibre composites by selectively reinforcing the main load path
has been shown to be an effective technique for reducing vehicle
weight without excessive cost increase [21].
In the current work, corrugated sandwich coupons were manu-
factured using glass (both long fibre and woven fabric) and carbon
(woven fabric) fibres, and two different resins, polyester and vinyl Fig. 2. Experimental set-up for (a) three-point-bending and (b) compression tests
ester, as matrix. The face-sheets and core were bonded using epoxy on corrugated sandwich coupons.
adhesive. Parametric studies of three-point-bending and compres-
sive properties of the manufactured sandwich coupons are pre-
sented, focusing on the influencing parameters of (i) fibre type in (450 g/m2) was used as the reinforcement, and enydyne dicyclo-
the face-sheets, corrugation angle, core sheet thickness, and core pentadiene modified polyester resin 1735 cured with the methyl-
and face-sheet adhesion length, aiming to improve the bending ethyl ketone peroxide (MEKP) catalyst was used as the matrix. To
stiffness and strength, and (ii) the fibre type of face- and core- study the effect of fibre hybridisation, Colan™ E-glass plain weave
sheets and foam insert, seeking to improve the energy absorbance. fabric (600 g/m2) and Sigmatex™ carbon 2/2 twill weave fabric
(T300, 3 K Tow, 199 GSM) were used to reinforce a vinyl ester resin
2. Experimental details (Epovia VE RF 100T) cured with Andonox LCR/S MEKP catalyst. The
reason of using the vinyl ester resin as matrix is that it performs
Composite sandwich coupons with one corrugation cell were better than the polyester resin in impregnating the woven fabric.
fabricated for bending tests using different reinforcements and Aluminium moulds with different dimension and corrugation an-
matrices. A geometric illustration of the sandwich coupon with gles were fabricated for making the corrugated core; both the com-
one corrugation is shown in Fig. 1. To investigate the influence of posite core and face-sheets were prepared using wet lay-up. For all
corrugation angle (h), core sheet thickness (tc), and core and face- the composite coupons, the core-sheets were made from glass fibre
sheet adhesion length (l1), chopped Colan™ E-glass fibre mat reinforcement. Both the composite core and face-sheets were

Table 1
The fibre types and geometrical dimensions of corrugated sandwich composite coupons for parametric investigation.

Influencing Corrugation Core sheet thickness Face-sheet Adhesion length Adhesion length Total height Fibre type of face-
factor angle (h, °) (tc, mm) thickness (tf, mm) (l1, mm) (l2, mm) (h, mm) sheets
Corrugation 35 3 3 30 28 60 Chop strand glass fibre
angle 45 3 3 30 28 60 Chop strand glass fibre
75 3 3 30 28 60 Chop strand glass fibre
90 3 3 30 28 60 Chop strand glass fibre
Core sheet 45 1.8 3 30 28 56 Chop strand glass fabric
thickness 45 3 3 30 28 60 Chop strand glass fabric
45 4.2 3 30 28 61 Chop strand glass fabric
Adhesion length 90 3 3 30 28 61 Chop strand glass fabric
90 3 3 50 48 61 Chop strand glass fabric
Fibre type of 45 3 3 30 28 60 Woven carbon fabric
face sheets 45 3 3 30 28 60 Woven glass fabric
45 3 3 30 28 60 Carbon/glass (50:50)
woven fabric
 J. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 52 (2013) 767–773 769

Fig. 3. Loading curves for bending tests on corrugated sandwich coupons affected by corrugation angle, core sheet thickness, adhesion length and fibre type in face-sheets.

70 0.30 0.42
Weight specific strength

Weight specific strength

Effect of corrugation angle

(a) (b) Effect of core sheet thickness
Width specific strength

Width specific strength

50
60 0.36
0.24
40 0.30
(kN/mm)

50

(kN/mm)
(N/g)

0.18
(N/g)

0.24
40
0.12 30
0.18
30
0.06 20 0.12
20
0.06
o o o o
35 45 75 90 1.8 mm 3 mm 4.2 mm

0.30 50 0.18
Weight specific strength
Weight specific strength

Effect of adhesion length Effect of fibre type in face sheets

Width specific strength

Width specific strength

50
0.24 40
(kN/mm)
(kN/mm)

0.12
0.18
(N/g)

40
(N/g)

30
0.12
30 20 0.06
(c) 0.06 (d)
20 10
30 mm 50 mm Carbon Glass Hybrid

Fig. 4. Specific bending strength of corrugated sandwich coupons affected by corrugation angle, core sheet thickness, adhesion length and fibre type in face-sheets.

cured at room temperature overnight before they were bonded to- Composite sandwich coupons with two corrugation cells were
gether using epoxy adhesive Techniglue CA. Table 1 shows the manufactured for compression tests. Specimens with dimension
material constitution and geometric dimensions for each type of of 214 mm  66 mm  31 mm were prepared with corrugation an-
sandwich coupon for bending tests. gle of 45° and tested under compression in a MTS 250 kN servo
Three-point-bending tests were performed using an Instron hydraulic tester at loading rate of 2 mm/min (shown in Fig. 2b).
5569 universal tester in accordance with the ASTM D 7264 stan- For compression specimens, the same glass woven and carbon wo-
dard, with a crosshead speed of 1 mm/min. The fibre reinforcement ven fabrics as those employed for bending tests were used as rein-
types and geometrical dimensions of different coupons are sum- forcement but with vinyl ester resin being the matrix for both the
marised in Table 1. Three rollers with diameter of 50 mm were core and face-sheets. Two-part polyurethane expanding foam Eco-
used for the bending tests, with a span length of 190 mm. The Foam GP330 was employed as filler for improving the energy
experimental set-up for the three-point-bending on composite absorption of the panel. Three specimens were fabricated and
coupons is shown in Fig. 2a; this loading configuration is represen- tested for each type, i.e. the glass fibre, carbon fibre and hybrid
tative of the impact loading by a blunt body of dimension similar to (carbon/glass = 50:50) fibre composites with and without foam
the corrugation cell width. inserts.
770 J. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 52 (2013) 767–773
Fig. 5. Effect of corrugation angle on the failure modes of bending specimens. (a)
The top view and (b) the side view.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Bending performance of corrugated sandwich coupons
3.1.1. Bending strength
Fig. 3 shows the effect of corrugation angle (h), core-sheet thick-
ness (tc), core-sheet and face-sheet adhesion length (l1) and fibre
type of face-sheets on the load–deflection curves of corrugated
sandwich composite coupons. Fig. 4 compares the specific strength
of the manufactured composite coupons taking into account of the
weight and width of the corrugated sandwich coupons. The specific
strengths per weight and per unit width are calculated in accor-
dance with the following equations:
Sweight ¼ Pmax =m
Swidth ¼ P max =w
where the Sweight denotes the weight specific strength, Pmax the max-
imum load, and m the mass of the composite coupon. Parameter
Swidth denotes the width specific strength, and w the width of the
coupon. As can be seen from Figs. 3a and 4a, the coupon with the
smallest corrugation angle 35° yielded the lowest bending strength
of 21 kN. As the corrugation angle increased to 75° and 90°, the cou-
pons produced similar maximum load of around 23 kN. The coupon
with h equals to 45°, however, achieved the highest failure load of
28 kN. The experimental results may have been influenced by the
manufacturing processes. The aluminium mould with 45° corruga-
tion angle employed to fabricate the core of the sandwich coupons
was the easiest to lay-up the chop strand glass fibre mats; as the
corrugation angle increased to 75° and 90°, the wet lay-up process
became more difficult, since the impregnation of long glass fibres
with polyester resin matrix became difficult when sharp corners
Fig. 6. Effect of core sheet thickness on the failure modes of bending specimens. (a)
Core failure of the coupon with core sheet thickness of 1.8 mm (the thinnest); (b)
the top view and (c) the side view.
ð1Þ are used. Nevertheless, the results suggest that there exists an opti-
mum corrugation angle that will provide the highest load carrying
ð2Þ capacity for a unit corrugation cell.
In contrast, when the 3-point bending strengths are normalised
by the weight and width of the coupons, the weight-specific
strength and the width-specific strength show an ascending trend
as the corrugation angle increases, as shown in Fig. 4a. This in-
crease in specific strength is due that both the weight and width
of the corrugation unit cell, as shown in Fig. 5a, decrease with cor-
rugation angle.
For a constant corrugation angle of 45°, the influences of core
sheet thickness on the bending strength and specific bending
strengths are shown in Figs. 3b and 4b, respectively. It is clear from
these results that the bending strength increases proportionally to
the web thickness.
Increasing the adhesion length (l1) from 30 mm to 50 mm pro-
duced an increase in bending strength, as shown in Figs. 3c and 4c.
However, due to the increase in width and weight, specific
strengths actually decreased.
 J. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 52 (2013) 767–773 771

(a) Glass fibre

16 Carbon fibre
Hybrid fibre

Load (kN)
12

0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Displacement (mm)

(b) Glass fibre with foam

Carbon fibre with foam
16
Hybrid fibre with foam

Load (kN)
12

Fig. 7. Effect of adhesion length on the failure modes of bending specimens. (a) The
top view and (b) the side view.
For a given core made of woven glass fabric reinforced vinyl es-
ter resin (corrugation angle = 45°, web thickness = 1.8 mm),
changes in face-sheets, from carbon woven fabric, to glass woven
fabric and to the hybridisation of carbon and glass woven fabric
(50:50), resulted in a more complex behaviour, as shown in
Fig. 3d. Coupons with hybrid face-sheets gave the highest maxi-
mum bending load of 25 kN, in comparison with the strengths of
coupons made with pure carbon and pure glass fibre reinforce-
ment, which produced similar strength of 22 kN. Our previous
work on glass/carbon hybrid composite laminates [21] has re-
vealed that the alternating lay-up of [C/G]ns can effectively enhance
the compressive strength and the lay-up scheme using carbon fibre
layers at the exterior [Cn/Gn]s can maximize flexural strength but
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Displacement (mm)
Fig. 9. Loading curves for compression tests on corrugated sandwich coupons
affected by (a) fibre type and (b) foam insert.
do not affect tensile properties when 50% carbon fibre and 50%
glass fibre reinforcements were used. Based on this finding, the hy-
brid-material coupons were designed to achieve the best compres-
sive strength of carbon/glass hybrid laminate in the top face-sheet
and the best flexural strength in the bottom face-sheet when the
sandwich coupon was under bending. Specifically, the hybrid com-
posite coupon prepared in the current work employed the lay-up
scheme of (i) [C/G]5 for the top face-sheet and (ii) [G5C5] for the
bottom face-sheet. The specific strengths shown in Fig. 4d are also
very encouraging results, i.e. the specific strength of the coupons
with hybrid face-sheets made of carbon and glass at 50:50 ratio

Fig. 8. Effect of fibre type of face-sheets on the failure modes of bending specimens. (a) The top view; (b) the core failure in the coupon with hybrid composite face-sheets; (c–
e) are enlarged damage areas in the top face-sheet of coupons with carbon fibre, glass fibre and carbon/glass (50:50) face-sheets, respectively.
772 J. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 52 (2013) 767–773

10 3.1.2. Bending failure modes

(a) Fig. 5 shows the effect of corrugation angle on bending failure
modes. It is clear that the centre of the top face-sheet where the
Average failure load (kN)

8
upper roller contacted the specimen exhibited the most severe
damage. Both the top view and the side view (Fig. 5b) show crack-
6 ing of the top face-sheet and debonding between the top skin and
the core. With the increase of corrugation angle, the damage area
4 became larger, confirming the better support by webs perpendicu-
lar of the face-sheets. At the same corrugation angle of 45°, the
thicker the web is, the less damage was sustained by the web,
2
referring to Fig. 6. In the case of 1.8 mm thick web, extensive dam-
age of the web of the corrugated core is visible in Fig. 6a. The influ-
0 ence of adhesion length is shown in Fig. 7, where the coupon with
Glass Carbon Hybrid
longer adhesion length (5 mm) failed at the adhesion region be-
tween the top face-sheet and the core, with less damage observed
1.0 (b) on the top skin compared with the coupon with shorter adhesion
Specific energy absorption (J/g)

length (3 mm). It is interesting that the use of different fibre rein-

0.8 forcements in the face-sheets resulted in totally different damage
modes of the sandwich coupons, which were fabricated with the
0.6 same corrugated core and the same materials. The coupon with
carbon fibre face-sheets showed a brittle failure mode on the top
skin, referring to Fig. 8c, while the coupon with glass fibre face-
0.4
sheets and with hybrid face-sheets showed no clear breakage line.
The area where the core joins the bottom face-sheet failed in the
0.2 hybrid composite coupon, indicating the stronger mechanical
property of the hybrid face-sheets.
0.0
Glass Carbon Hybrid
3.2. Energy absorption of corrugated sandwich coupons

without foam
3.2.1. Load displacement curves
with foam
Fig. 9 shows the load displacement curves of the corrugated
0.5
(c)
sandwich coupons, without and with foam fillings, under compres-
sion as shown in Fig. 2b. In the elastic region of the loading curves,
Crush force efficiency

0.4 the core was elastically compressed with bending deformation;

when the initial peak load was reached, a sudden load drop oc-
0.3 curred due to the buckling of the web [22]. The damage and rup-
ture originated from where the core was bonded to the face-
0.2 sheet. The damaged core was then further crushed, causing more
disbanding and flattening of the core. The carbon fibre sandwich
0.1 coupons exhibited higher peak loads than those with glass fibre
and hybrid fibre reinforcement, due to the carbon fibre composites
0.0 having the higher strength than glass and hybrid carbon–glass
Glass Carbon Hybrid composites. With the incorporation of the foam insert, the peak
loads all increased due to the better support of the web by the
Fig. 10. Comparison of compressive properties of glass, carbon, glass/carbon hybrid
fibre composite specimens with and without foam inserts. (a) Average failure load; foam, delaying disbonding of the core and face-sheets, and thus
(b) specific energy absorption and (c) crush force efficiency. the core failure.

3.2.2. Comparison of energy dissipation under compression

produced comparable values as the coupons with pure carbon Crashworthiness is the ability of a structure to absorb energy
fibre composite face-sheet. This result is of both economical during an impact to prevent injury to the occupants. In the present
significance and weight reduction potential for load-bearing investigation, the energy dissipation under quasi-static compres-
applications. sion loading represents crash performance under low-speed

Fig. 11. Compression testing on (a) hybrid composite specimens and their (b) foam filled composite specimens.
 J. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 52 (2013) 767–773
impact. Three key parameters are average crushing load, specific
energy absorption (SEA) and crush force efficiency. The average
failure load is the average value of the high and low peak load val-
ues after the initial failure. The specific energy absorption is the en-
ergy absorbed per unit mass of the materials, which is the most
relevant mechanical property to consider in order to improve the
energy absorption and design more efficient mechanisms of col-
lapse [23]. The crush force efficiency is the ratio between the aver-
age failure load and the initial failure load [24]. If the efficiency
value equals to 1, i.e., the initial failure load is the same as the aver-
age failure load, then the passenger will not experience a sudden
pulse during an impact.
Fig. 10 shows the comparison between different fibre types and
the influence of foam insertion. The average failure load for the
coupons with glass fibre, carbon fibre and hybrid fibre reinforce-
ment were similar. With the foam insertion, a 37% increase (over
the coupons without foam) was realised for the glass and hybrid
composite coupons and a 40% increase was realised for the carbon
fibre composite coupons. The SEA values for the coupons followed
a descending sequence of the carbon fibre, hybrid fibre and then
glass fibre composite coupons. The carbon fibre coupon had a
SEA value of 0.68 J/g, which was 33% higher than the hybrid cou-
pon and 42% higher than the glass fibre coupon. After the foams
were inserted, a slight increase of SEA was resulted. The crush force
efficiency describes the ability for the structure to perform after
the initial failure during the crushing process. It can be noted that
only the hybrid and the glass fibre composite coupons enhanced
the crush force efficiency (>20%) with the addition of foam. The
carbon fibre coupon, however, showed slight decrease in crush
force efficiency. To enhance the energy absorption, foams have
been used to fill thin walled metallic tubes. Mamalis et al. found
that the foam-filled tubes show more stable post-crushing behav-
iour than the empty tubes and the foams were found to smooth the
load displacement curves in the post crushing region [25]. In the
current work, the foam material did not show significant improve-
ment in crashworthiness in a similar manner except for the case of
glass fibre composite coupons, due to the foam’s low mechanical
property; therefore more rigid foam should be applied in future
work. As shown in Fig. 11, the foam only showed limited support
of the corrugated sandwich structure under compression loading.
4. Conclusions
Corrugated sandwich structure made form glass fibre, carbon fi-
bre and hybrid (glass:carbon = 50:50) fibre reinforcement and
polymer matrix were investigated for their bending and out-of-
plane compression performance. Increasing the corrugation angle
and the core-sheet thickness improved the specific bending
strength of the sandwich structure, while increasing the bond
length led to lower specific bending strength. The use of hybrid fi-
bre face-sheets (glass:carbon = 50:50) was found to yield compara-
ble specific bending strength as the carbon fibre coupons. The
hybrid composite coupon with foam insertion showed medium en-
ergy absorption between the glass fibre and the carbon fibre com-
posite coupons but the highest crush force efficiency among all
designs.
773
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