Mechanical behavior of sandwich structure made of perlite foam core and JFRP skin

In this work, novel sandwich structures have been developed based on perlite/sodium silicate foam as core and jute fiber reinforced epoxy polymer composite (JFRP) as skin. The main objective is to fabricate the sandwich composites and investigate the mechanical behavior of the composites for varying core densities. Perlite/sodium silicate foam cores were consolidated by mixing with the sodium silicate solution. A mold was used to compact the mixer of the perlite and sodium silicate by hand pressing and the wet compact was dried for 24 hours in an electric oven for curing. The hand lay-up process was adopted to fabricate the JFRP. The sandwich formation was done by attaching JFRP skins to both sides of the foam cores. The flexural and compression tests were performed and the results were analyzed in terms of core density. The findings show that the sandwich structures made of high-density foam cores showed enhanced mechanical properties. The flexural and compressive strength increased by 71.75% and 211.86% respectively due to an increase in density of 9.26%. Analysis of the failure behavior during flexural tests indicates that the failure initiates at the core of the sandwich structures showing the direction for the future improvement of developed composites.