Compression failure of sandwich specimens with and without face/core debonds

The objective of this thesis is to report on an experimental study on the compressive behavior of foam cored sandwich composite specimens with and without face/core debond. A test fixture was designed which enables a precisely machined sandwich specimen instrumented with back-to-back strain gages to be loaded in edgewise compression. Tests were conducted on specimens without implanted face/core interface debonds over a range of core densities and gage lengths. The experimentally determined compression strengths and failure modes were compared to closed-form predictions and finite element analysis. Specimens with an implanted through-the-width face/core debond were also tested and mechanism of failure was analyzed using finite element analysis. Good agreement between collapse loads predicted using geometrically nonlinear analysis and experimentally measured strengths was observed.