Evaluation and modeling the static and free vibrational behaviours of AA3003/CFRP honeycomb sandwich structures

Honeycomb structures are widely applied to many aerospace applications nowadays. Research in the successful manufacturing of sandwich composites itself is a thrust area to many advanced materials researchers. Nevertheless, in real service conditions, all the produced sandwich structures are commissioned after many machining processes. Abrasive water jet machining is one of the exclusive methods of machining high brittle structures. Honeycomb structures layered with carbon and/or Kevlar taps possess very high brittle kind of behaviors. Henceforth, Abrasive Water Jet machining can be adopted for producing net designed shape. The present work investigates enhancing the mechanical response of AA3003 honeycomb of 0.4 mm cell-wall thickness after skinned with carbon fiber epoxy composite layers. Composite layers of 0.6 mm are staked on both sides and glued using Araldite. 12 h oven curing has been employed at 60 °C. Conditioned samples have proceeded for standard mechanical characterizations in addition to the free vibrational and damping properties. A novel approach to measure the sandwich panel’s damping is experimented with in this work by conducting impact hammer excitation to stimulate the possible modes in the integrated system. Finally, the mechanical properties of sandwich panels are investigated by simulation software along with the experimental methods. Further, the analytical results are compared, and the results reveal that an increase in core thickness enhanced the sandwich composites’ damping behavior. Coupons have been taken from various regions to balance the uncertainty. The experimental results show the significant enhancement of the aluminum core’s rigidity due to the composite lapping.