Honeycomb sandwich structures are used in a wide variety of applications. Nevertheless, due to manufacturing defects or impact loads, these structures can be subject to imperfect bonding or debonding between the skin and the honeycomb core. The presence of debonding reduces the bending stiffness of the composite panel, which causes detectable changes in its vibration characteristics. This artic...

TIlls paper describes the design and manufacture of a multifunctional space structure. The analytical techniques used in this project included thermal analyses of structures in various earth orbits, determination of structural requirements from optical performance calculations, designing of near zero Coefficient of Thermal Expansion (CTE) laminates, consideration of manufacturing and material v...

The objective of this research project is to examine the use of FRP materials for bridge construction. In particular, this project utilizes glass FRP (GFRP) honeycomb sandwich panels. The installation of three bridges, one comprised solely of the FRP panels and two comprised of the FRP panels supported by steel girders, is outlined. Furthermore, results of preliminary testing conducted on the F...

The scope of research activity that Bruce Thompson embraced was very large. In this talk three different research topics that the author shared with Bruce are reviewed. They represent Bruce’s introduction to NDE and include nonlinear acoustics, nondestructive measurements of adhesive bond strengths in honeycomb panels, and studies of flexural wave dispersion in honeycomb materials. In the first...

A study on the bending response of a composite curved panel with pyramidal metallic truss cores suitable for functional applications is presented using a combination of analytical modeling, three-point bending experiments and finite element (FE) based simulations. The aluminum pyramidal cores were constructed using an interlocking method before curing with composite face sheets to fabricate the...

In this paper, a new roofing system is introduced, which is constructued using the precast composite sandwich panels. This roofing sandwich panels system consists of three kinds of precast concrete sandwich panels including capital panels, beam or between columns panels, and slab or middle panels. The panels are composed of three layers; A high strength reinforced concrete top layer. A thick la...