The effect of strut to face-sheet transition geometry on the effective mechanical properties of sandwich panels with body-centered cubic core structure

Porous structures found in nature offer benefits such as lightweight properties and high strength, driving innovations in industries like aerospace, automotive, medicine, and marine sciences. These increasingly studied porous structures are engineered and manufactured as cellular structures. Among them, strut-based cellular materials, known as Lattice Structures, include the Body-Centered Cubic Lattice Structure, which is notable for its adjustable geometric parameters and ease of fabrication. Sandwich structures consist of a less rigid core layer positioned between two high rigidity surface plates. In some designs, the core incorporates Body-Centered Cubic Lattice Structures. This thesis focuses on modeling sandwich structures with a Body Centered Cubic Lattice core and analyzing their behavior under static loads and vibration. Finite element analysis and the homogenization process were validated through experimental testing. For the experiments, 15 sandwich structures, comprising three different sample types, with five specimens each, were fabricated from AlSi10Mg material using Powder Bed Fusion technology. Microstructural scanning, vibration tests to determine natural frequencies, and compression tests were conducted to assess the effective elastic modulus. A transition radius was introduced in the struts connecting to the surface plate, leading to the development of a novel cell type as an alternative to the conventional Body-Centered Cubic structure. Using this new cell design, additional models were created, and static and vibration analyses were performed under compression and bending loads, comparing their performance with the traditional Body-Centered Cubic structure.