• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.623-641
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• 2013

The fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composite panel, with the benefits of light weight, high strength, good corrosion resistance, and long-term durability, has been considered as one of the prosperous alternatives for structural retrofits and replacements. Although with these advantages, a further application of FRPs in bridge engineering may be restricted, and that is partly due to some unsatisfied thermal performance observed in recent studies. In this regard, Kansas Department of Transportation (DOT) conducted a field monitoring program on a bridge with glass FRP (GFRP) honeycomb hollow section sandwich panels. The temperatures of the panel surfaces and ambient air were measured from December 2002 to July 2004. In this paper, the temperature distributing behaviors of the panels are firstly demonstrated and discussed based on the field measurements. Then, a numerical modeling procedure of temperature fields is developed and verified. This model is capable of predicting the temperature distributions with the local environmental conditions and material's thermal properties. Finally, a parametric study is employed to examine the sensitivities of several temperature influencing factors, including the hollow section configurations, environmental conditions, and material properties.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society For Composite Materials Conference
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• 2005.04a
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• pp.55-58
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• 2005

The present study aims to design electrically and structurally effective antenna structures in order that the structural surface itself could become the antenna. The basic design concept is composite sandwich structure in which microstrip antenna is embedded and this is termed composite smart structure (CSS). The most important outstanding problem is that composite materials of structural function cannot be used without reducing antenna efficiency. Unfortunately, such materials have high electrical loss. This is a significant design problem that needs to be solved in practical applications. Therefore, the effects of composites facesheet on antenna performances are investigated in the first stage and changes in the gain of microstrip antenna due to composites facesheet have been determined. ‘Open condition’ is defined when gain is maximized and is a significant new concept for the design of high-gain antennas considering bandwidth in practical application. The open condition can be made with the outer facesheet by controlling its position. In the design of CSS, glass/epoxy composites and Nomex honeycomb were used with exploiting open condition. Experiments, confirm that the gain is improved and the bandwidth is also as wide as specified in our requirements. With the open condition, wideband antenna can be integrated with mechanical structures without reducing any electrical performances, as confirmed experimentally here.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.346-349
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• 2005

The present study aims to design electrically and structurally effective antenna structures in order that the structural surface itself could become the antenna. The basic design concept is composite sandwich structure in which microstrip antenna is embedded and this is termed composite smart structure (CSS). The most important outstanding problem is that composite materials of structural function cannot be used without reducing antenna efficiency. Unfortunately, such materials have high electrical loss. This is a significant design problem that needs to be solved in practical applications. Therefore, the effect of composites facesheet on antenna performances is studied in the first stage. Changes in the gain of microstrip antenna due to composites facesheet have been determined. 'Open condition' is defined when gain is maximized and is a significant new concept in the design of high-gain antennas considering bandwidth in practical application. The open condition can be made with any thickness of outer facesheet by controlling its position. In the design of CSS, glass/epoxy composites and Nomex honeycomb were used with exploiting open condition. Experiments, confirm that the gain is improved (over 11 dBi) and the bandwidth is also as wide as specified in our requirements (over 10% at 12.2 GHz). With the open condition, wideband antenna can be integrated with mechanical structures without reducing any electrical performances, as confirmed experimentally here.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.223-230
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• 2018

This study examines a non-contact laser scanning-based ultrasound system, called an angular scan pulse-echo ultrasonic propagation imager (A-PE-UPI), that uses coincided laser beams for ultrasonic sensing and generation. A laser Doppler vibrometer is used for sensing, while a diode pumped solid state (DPSS) Q-switched laser is used for generation of thermoelastic waves. A high-speed raster scanning of up to 10-kHz is achieved using a galvano-motorized mirror scanner that allows for coincided sensing and for the generation beam to perform two-dimensional scanning without causing any harm to the surface under inspection. This process allows for the visualization of longitudinal wave propagation through-the-thickness. A pulse-echo ultrasonic wave propagation imaging algorithm (PE-UWPI) is used for on-the-fly damage visualization of the structure. The presented system is very effective for high-speed, localized, non-contact, and non-destructive inspection of aerospace structures. The system is tested on an aluminum honeycomb sandwich with disbonds and a carbon fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) honeycomb sandwich with a layer overlap. Inspection is performed at a 10-kHz scanning speed that takes 16 seconds to scan a $100{\times}100mm^2$ area with a scan interval of 0.25 mm. Finally, a comparison is presented between angular-scanning and a linear-scanning-based pulse-echo UPI system. The results show that the proposed system can successfully visualize defects in the inspected specimens.

• Composites Research
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.24-29
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• 2009

This study aims to investigate the residual strength of sandwich composites with Al honeycomb core and carbon fiber face sheets after the quasi-static indentation damage by the experimental investigation. The 3-point bending test and the edge-wise compressive strength test were used to find the mechanical properties, and the quasi-static point load was applied to introduce the simulated damage on the specimen. The damaged specimens were finally assessed by the 3-point bending test and the compressive strength test. The investigation results revealed the residual strength of the damaged specimens due to the quasi-static indentation. The both test results showed that the residual strength of the damaged specimen was decreased according to increases of the damaged depth.

• Composites Research
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.25-30
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• 2007

This paper describes the basic design and fabrication of smart skin antenna for phased array applications. The smart skin phased array antenna, of which radiation pattern can be electrically steerable without mechanical rotation, has to meet the both mechanical and electrical performance. The smart skin antenna is a honeycomb sandwich structure to enhance the mechanical performance such as strength, weight and so on. The example of smart skin antenna integrated with radome is designed with the resonant frequency of 5 GHz, circular polarization, 2 by 2 subarray, and a coaxial probe-fed excitation. In addition, the performance of raw microstrip patch antenna uncovered radome is investigate. The fabricated smart skin antenna shows a reasonable performance with gain of 12.2 dBi and frequency bandwidth of 6.4 %.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.605-628
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• 2016

The energy absorption characteristics of diamond core sandwich cylindrical columns under axial crushing process depend greatly on the amount of material which participates in the plastic deformation. Both the single-objective and multi-objective optimizations are performed for columns under axial crushing load with core thickness and helix pitch of the honeycomb core as design variables. Models are optimized by multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) algorithm to achieve maximum specific energy absorption (SEA) capacity and minimum peak crushing force (PCF). Results show that optimization improves the energy absorption characteristics with constrained and unconstrained peak crashing load. Also, it is concluded that the aluminum tube has a better energy absorption capability rather than steel tube at a certain peak crushing force. The results justify that the interaction effects between the honeycomb and column walls greatly improve the energy absorption efficiency. A ranking technique for order preference (TOPSIS) is then used to sort the non-dominated solutions by the preference of decision makers. That is, a multi-criteria decision which consists of MOPSO and TOPSIS is presented to find out a compromise solution for decision makers. Furthermore, local and global sensitivity analyses are performed to assess the effect of design variable values on the SEA and PCF functions in design domain. Based on the sensitivity analysis results, it is concluded that for both models, the helix pitch of the honeycomb core has greater effect on the sensitivity of SEA, while, the core thickness has greater effect on the sensitivity of PCF.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.105-117
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• 2022

Impact resistance efficiency of the newly designed sandwich beam with a laterally arched core as bio-inspired by the woodpecker is numerically investigated. The principal components of the beam comprise a dual-core system sandwiched by the top and bottom laminated CFRP skins. Different materials, including hot melt adhesive, high-density polyethylene (HDPE), acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), epoxy resin (EPON862), aluminum (Al6061), and mild carbon steel (AISI1018), are considered for the side-arched core layer of the beam for impact efficiency assessment. The aluminum honeycomb takes the role of the second core. Contact force, stress, damage formation, and impact energy for beams equipped with different materials are examined. A diversity in performance superiority is noticed in each of these indicators for different core materials. Therefore, for overall performance appraisal, the impact resistance efficiency index, which covers several chief impact performance parameters, of each sandwich beam is computed and compared. The impact resistance efficiency index of the structure equipped with the AISI1018 core is found to be the highest, about 3-10 times greater than other specimens, thus demonstrating its efficacy as the optimal material for the bio-inspired dual-core sandwich beam system.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.83 no.4
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• pp.465-473
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• 2022

In this research, a numerical study has been provided for examining the nonlinear stability behaviors of sandwich beams having a cellular core and two face sheets made of nanocomposites. The nonlinear stability behaviors of the sandwich beam having geometrically perfect/imperfect shapes have been studied when it is subjected to a compressive buckling load. The nanocomposite face sheets are made of epoxy reinforced by graphene oxide powders (GOPs). Also, the core has the shape of a honeycomb with regular configuration. Using finite element method based on a higher-order deformation beam element, the system of equations of motions have been solved to derive the stability curves. Several parameters such as face sheet thickness, core wall thickness, graphene oxide amount and boundary conditions have remarkable influences on stability curves of geometrically perfect/imperfect sandwich beams.

• Composites Research
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.22-29
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• 2001

The purpose of this paper is to determine the effect of the autoclave inner pressure rate, heat-up rate, tool round angle, Thickness of core, height of joggle on defects, and to minimize the defects of aircraft sandwich structure reinforced with honeycomb core occurred in autoclave processing. The results showed that the geometry of aircraft sandwich structure and tool such as tool round angle, thickness of core, height of joggle, and the autoclave cure conditions such as inner pressure rate, heat up rate strongly affected the core movement, core wrinkle, bridge phenomenon of prepreg and depression of core that occurred in autoclave processing.