Fatigue of composite honeycomb sandwich panels under random vibration load

The fatigue test of composite honeycomb sandwich panels has been carried out under random vibration load in this investigation. The test results show that, the failure mode of the honeycomb sandwich structure under random vibration load is the same as that under constant-amplitude load, both of which are core shear failure and the resulting face-core delamination. Based on the test results and the S-N curve of honeycomb sandwich panel under constant-amplitude load, a method has been proposed to predict the fatigue life of composite honeycomb sandwich structures under random vibration load. The core shear stress is taken as the fatigue damage parameter. The validity of the proposed method has been verified by comparing the predicted results with the test results.