Compressive Performance of the PVC Foam Materials used as Sandwich Panel Core

Abstract

PVC foam materials are preferred in many engineering applications because of their lightweight nature and strength/weight ratio. They are mainly used as the core material in the middle of sandwich panels with improved flexural rigidity. The mechanical performances of sandwich panels, such as flexural load-deflection, core shear load, core shear failure load, and indentation failure load, directly depend on the mechanical properties of the core material. In this study, compression tests of AIREX C70 PVC foams with three different densities were performed. The elastic modulus and strength results obtained from the compression tests were compared with the mechanical properties provided in the dataset supplied by the material manufacturer. The core yield loads of a concept sandwich panel were then obtained using the compression mechanical properties of the core, which were obtained from datasets and experimental results. When the core yield loads obtained using both data were compared, it was revealed that the load obtained using the dataset data was 23% inaccurate. Thus, the study explained why compression tests are necessary even though the mechanical properties of PVC foam materials are known in the datasheet.