Abstract:

Two types of experiments were designed and performed to evaluate the adhesive bond in metal foam composite sandwich structures. The tensile bond strength of face/core was determined through the flatwise tensile test (FWT). The test results show that the interfacial peel strength is lower than the interlaminar peel strength in FWT test. The mode I interfacial fracture toughness (GIC) of sandwich structures containing a pre-crack on the upper face/core interface is determined by modified cracked sandwich beam (MCSB) experiment. It is found that the crack propagates unsynchronously on the two side of the specimen and the propagation of interfacial debonding always stays on the face/core interface during the MCSB tests. In order to simulate the failure of metal foam composite sandwich structures, a computational model based on the Tsai-Hill failure
criterion and cohesive zone model is used. By comparing with experiment results, it can be concluded that the computational model can validly simulate the interfacial failure of metal foam composite sandwich structures with reasonable accuracy

Key words: Interfacial fracture toughness, Strain energy release rate, Tsai-Hill failure criterion, Cohesive zone model