Fracture and flexural analysis of sandwich panel with polypropylene honeycomb as core and jute fabric reinforced epoxy matrix composite as skin layer

In this modern world, most of the structural components are being replaced by composite materials. Sandwich panels have major advantages and applications in light weight systems like aircraft wings and helicopter components because of their low weight and high strength. The sandwich panel is fabricated by joining two face sheets to a core. Here, the face sheets are made of jute reinforced polymer matrix composite and the core is poly-propylene (PP) honeycomb structure. In this work, the flexural and fracture strengths of sandwich panels with different face sheet thickness, core thickness and orientations are compared numerically and experimentally. The ANOVA (Analysis of Variation) evaluation is used to find out the influence of the factors on flexural strength and stress intensity factor of the sandwich panel. The MINITAB software is used to carry out ANOVA analysis. The regression equations are obtained for maximum flexural stress and stress intensity factor. From the regression equations, the jute fiber layer is most significant factor than other two factors i.e. core thickness and jute fabric orientation.