Sandwich structures consisting of aluminum foam core and fiber reinforced plastic top layers

Thinking of new approaches for light weight design with sandwiches, the combination of aluminum foam as core and fiber reinforced plastics as top layers can be a good way to increase the light weight aspect and combine advantages of both materials. For structural applications, often a high bending stiffness and a good damping capability in the combination with the lightweight aspect are needed. For these new sandwiches, especially, the bonding properties are crucial for later applications. Therefore, investigations regarding the bonding properties of the combination of the two components are carried out. The objective is to find a way of combining these materials without adhesives. Different ways of composite manufacturing are tested and compared according to DIN 53292: "testing of sandwiches; tensile test perpendicular to the faces". Furthermore, different pretreatments of the foam core are compared. These include sandblasting with a chemically modified blasting materi al, a structure included by a modification of the foaming tool, and untreated foam for comparison reasons to the state of the art. It is found that the structure induced during the foaming step is suitable for adhesive bonding, but not for the other processes. Better results can be expected by further adaption of the implemented structure. The best results in the compression molding process are obtained with the sandblasted foam cores