Abstract
Experimental and numerical studies of composite sandwich structures are warranted to reap the benefits of these materials when they are well designed. In the current research, new liquid thermoplastic and epoxy resins were used to fabricate four composite sandwich panels with two additional foam types and different densities in the wind turbine industry. A comprehensive comparison of three-point bending test results was made. Finite-element-based simulations using the ABAQUS program with Hashin’s damage criterion were conducted to examine the failure behavior of the GFRP sandwich composites. The flexural behavior of the glass-fiber-reinforced plastic (GFRP) sandwich panels was investigated and compared with the experiments. The results show that the GF/PVC/Elium composite panel gives the highest load absorption, flexural strength, flexural modulus, core shear ultimate strength, and facing stress due to effect of the core foam and resin types. For the PVC foam core sandwich panel, using thermoplastic resin increased the flexural strength by 18% compared to that of the epoxy resin. The simulation results show excellent agreement between the finite-element-predicted failure loads and the experimental results.