An experimental study on the flexural behaviour of symmetric and asymmetric marine composite sandwich beams

This paper presents a rigorous study on the flexural behaviour of symmetric and asymmetric marine sandwich beams consisting of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) foam core and glass fibre composite face-sheets. The sandwich beams have a shear-span-to depth ratio (a/d) ranging from 2 to 7.5 and loaded under three- and four-point static bending configurations. The effect of mid-plane asymmetry, stacking sequence, fabric weight, and core type on the failure mode, bending rigidity and strength of the sandwich composites were investigated. Two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) analysis indicated that the effect of the a/d ratio and the loading type had a similar effect on failure load. The a/d ratio had a greater influence on the initial bending stiffness than the loading type for the asymmetric beams.