Anti-impact and vibration-damping design of cork-based sandwich structures for rotary-wing drone cage applications

This dissertation presents environmentally friendly sandwich structures with cork cores that show improved resistance to impact and vibration. The first part of the dissertation evaluates the combination of various common face-sheet materials in aerospace applications with a cork core to determine the best structure against impact and vibration. The results showed that a sandwich structure with CFRP face-sheets and a cork core performed best in terms of resistance to impact and vibration. In the second part of the dissertation, a drone cage was built using the CFRP/cork/CFRP sandwich structure and compared to cages made with a coarse-grained cork core and a PVC foam core. The results of impact and vibration tests showed that the cork-based cages had lower peak deceleration, a higher damping ratio, and greater structural stiffness, providing better protection for rotary-wing drones. The dissertation provides a promising solution for constructing drone cages that are environmentally friendly and offer superior protection against impact and vibrations.