Development of new reinforced load introductions for sandwich structures

This article deals with the design, manufacturing and testing of new innovative load introductions into sandwich structures consisting of fibre reinforced plastics. Vitally new to these load introductions is the principle of local through-the-thickness reinforcements by threads, resulting in an excellent connection of both face sheets and core and, if necessary, also the load introduction element itself. The threads are introduced into textile face sheets and the core by stitching process. After stitching, the textile face sheets and the threads are impregnated with the polymer matrix using a liquid composite moulding process. The resulting mechanical out-of-plane properties of the so-called IDAK load introductions outperform current state-of-the-art load introductions.