Study on failure mode of aluminum/PU foam sandwich plate under bending loads

This study focuses on the competing collapse mechanisms for a simply supported sandwich beam with LY12 (hard aluminum alloy) faces and a PU (Polyurethane) foam core subjected to three point bending. Simple analytical models have been modified based on published papers in order to predict the collapse load of the sandwich beams. In order to assess the accuracy of simple analytic formulas on failure mode prediction, eight samples with different failure modes are simulated by using finite element models and one of them is tested according to the Chinese Standard on bending of sandwich materials. The force-deformation curves from the analytical expression are compared with that of experimental and simulation results. A mechanism map is generated to reveal the dependence of the dominant collapse mechanism upon the geometry of the face and the core.