Fabrication and Flatwise Compression Property of Glass Fiber-Reinforced Polypropylene Corrugated Sandwich Panel

Composite sandwich structures with cellular cores have wide application in many fields such as aerospace due to their excellent properties. Thermoplastic composite structure has superior impact resistance and recycling ability compared with conventional thermosetting. The glass fiber-reinforced polypropylene corrugated sandwich panels were fabricated by hot-pressing and hot-melting methods, and the flatwise compression property was experimentally investigated. Numerical simulations by use of ABAQUS VUMAT were subsequently carried out, which captured the main experimental features. The classic buckling theory was used to establish the analytical prediction. Experimental results were used to fit the boundary condition factor between face sheet and corrugated core. The fabricated thermoplastic corrugation has competing compression strength with some metal lattice cores and outperforms the commercial aluminum foams with the same density.