Static and dynamic crushing of sandwich tubes with composite skins and three plywood cores (poplar, birch, and oak)

This paper presents the results of static and dynamic crushing of sandwich tubes with carbon or glass skins and different wood cores. Wood cores were made with poplar, birch, or oak veneer. The core thicknesses of the tubes were equal even if the thicknesses of the species veneers were different for availability reasons. For a tube with a birch core and carbon skins, the Specific Energy Absorption was 50.4 J/g in quasi-static tests and 66.6 J/g in dynamic, and the energy absorbed was 5427 J in quasi-static and 7025 J in dynamic. The birch layers were shown to make a very significant contribution although they were 40 times less expensive than carbon layers. Results from the research work described here show that these materials are appropriate candidates for energy absorption at low carbon emission and with renewable materials.