An experimental investigation of mechanical properties, forming limit curves, and bending behavior of aluminum-polymer sandwich composites

This study aimed to investigate the forming limit diagrams (FLDs), mechanical properties, and bending behavior of the three kinds of sandwich composites. The core layer in all sandwich sheets consisted of polyethylene, and just the skin layers were chosen to be AA5754 or AA3105. The results showed that the sandwich sheets are an appropriate choice to be used instead of the monometallic sheets. According to the 3-point bending test results, the flexural strength of the AL 3105/Polyethylene/AL 3105 sandwich composite is about 30 percent less than the AA3105 monometallic layer. Also, the formability of the metallic sandwich composites with non-identical skin layers was studied. The results demonstrated that using one layer AA 3105 and one layer AA5754 instead of AA5754 for both skin layers, although formability decreased about 11% in the plane strain region, the cost of fabricating the composite was decreased sheet reduces almost 75%. As a result, using skin layers with the different grades of aluminum is an appropriate way to reduce the cost of fabricating the aluminum-polymer sandwich composites, in which the formability does not decrease significantly.