Evaluation of materials and process to produce sandwich structures for the transport sector

The objective is to evaluate material and process alternatives to produce lightweight sandwich structures.

Weight is a vital factor in the transport sector and must be reduced in order to meet CO2 emission limits. Consequently, there is strong competition between different types of lightweighting materials, and one of the strategies that is gaining momentum is the use of sandwich solutions;

Consequently, this service considers making a technical-economic evaluation of the materials and processes to produce sandwich structures. The following activities are considered:

• Evaluation of different alternatives for skins
• Evaluation and selection of cores (foam, honeycomb, …) with different densities and thicknesses
• Definition of the most suitable structure and configuration for the sandwich panel by means of structural calculations using ANSYS
• Production of small demonstrators by vacuum press, RTM, etc. with different selected configurations. Evaluation of mechanical performance (flexural strength and modulus, compressive strength, etc…)
• The best material and process alternatives will be defined based on the results obtained