Abstract
This paper was carried out to investigate the characteristics of interlaminar fracture toughness of foam core sandwich structures under opening loading mode by using the double cantilever beam (DCB) specimens in Carbon/Epoxy and foam core composites. instead of using symmetric geometry of DCB specimen non-symmetric DCB specimen was used to calculate the interlaminar fracture toughness. Three approaches for calculating the energy release rate({{{{ {G }_{IC } }}}}) were compared. Fracture toughness of foam core sandwich structures by autoclave vacuum bagging and hotpress were compared and analyzed. Experiment nonlinear beam bending FEM method were performed. Suggested bonding surface compensation and equivalent area inertia moment was used to calculate the energy release rate in nonlinear analytical results. The conclusions among experimental nonlinear analytical and FEM results was observed. The vacuum bagging method was shown to be able to substitute method in stead of autoclave without serious loss of Mode I energy release rate({{{{ {G }_{IC }}}}}) to be able to substitute method in stead of autoclave without serious loss of Mode I energy release rate({{{{ {G }_{IC }}}}}).