• Composites Research
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.132-137
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• 2017

The purpose of this paper is to investigate failure characteristics of Carbon/BMI-Nomex honeycomb sandwich on design parameters. A total of 6 types sandwich specimens were manufactured according to core height, face thickness and density, and environmental condition were applied to evaluate temperature and humidity effects of one of these specimens. The test results show that the core shear buckling loads was commonly observed in all specimens except for the joint with density of $64kg/m^3$. After core shear buckling, however, the joint carried additional loads over the buckling loads and then finally failed in the upper face and lower face at the same time. In the case of specimen having high stiffness, the maximum failure load was low due to interfacial failure of the upper face and core without initial core shear buckling. The ETW1 and ETW2 conditions, which were carried out to evaluate the environmental condition of the sandwich specimen, show an initial failure mode which was significantly different from RTD condition. Also, the ETW2 condition with increased temperature under the same humidity shows that the core shear buckling load was 18% less than ETW1 condition.