Experimental and numerical investigation on the crushing behavior of sandwich composite under edgewise compression loading

In present study, the buckling and crushing behavior of foam-filled glass-fiber reinforced sandwich composite column under edgewise compression were investigated by experimental, theoretical, and finite element analysis (FEA) methods. Various ratios of slenderness columns were manufactured by the vacuum assisted resin injection (VARI) process. A simple theoretical model was introduced to predict the critical collapse load taking into account the various failure modes. A user subroutine VUMAT were implemented in commercial Abaqus software based on the Hashin failure criteria. The geometrical imperfection was considered in FEA model. The experimental results revealed that the critical collapse load would be significantly reduced with the increase of slenderness, especially for the columns with the same length. Through the observing of failure morphologies and the analysis of buckling, it can be found that the first- and second-order buckling mode would play a dominant role in the crushing failure process. The FEA results simulated by present model were in good agreement with the experimental results. The results obtained in present study will be useful for the design and application of foam-filled sandwich composite.