By enhancing the core aspects of sandwich frameworks, scientists have produced products that are incredibly light, durable, and versatile at once—ideal for aerospace applications.
"It's our viewpoint to develop modern compound products for flexible systems and, while doing so, to optimize their architectural efficiency—that is, acquiring the same efficiency with less sources or better functionality with the same quantity of material," says Paolo Ermanni, teacher for compound products and flexible frameworks at ETH Zurich.
At the same time, he and his collaborators investigate appropriate manufacturing processes that make the new products fascinating for practical applications.
SPARE THE RODS, SPOIL THE STRUCTURES?
Ermanni's PhD trainee Christoph Karl looks after the "architectural effectiveness" aspect. "As they feature a large stiffness and security whilst also being very light, sandwich frameworks are often used for light-weight building," he explains.
Sandwich frameworks typically consist of 2 slim and rigid cover layers and a low-density core material. "In our research we develop high-performance sandwich compounds made of carbon fiber-reinforced polymers, also known as CRP's or simply carbon fiber. In this approach, the core is composed of a truss framework of carbon fiber poles," says Karl. The great mechanical residential or commercial homes of carbon fiber imply that such core frameworks can have more stiffness and security compared to conventional foam or honeycomb cores.
Another considerable benefit of the truss cores, inning accordance with Karl, is the opportunity of a load-optimized design. "The mechanical residential or commercial homes of the sandwich compound depend highly on the core topology—in various other words, on the arrangement and orientation of the poles inside the core," he says. "With the help of numerical optimizations, we can tailor the orientation of the poles to specific external tons and thus maximize the architectural effectiveness for a particular application."
The core of a sandwich material scientists construct and optimize by doing this evaluates much less compared to 30 kgs each cubic meter (a cubic meter of steel, comparative, evaluates in at almost 8,000 kgs).
