A new approach on integrating joining inserts for composite sandwich structures with foam cores

Due to their high potential in lightweight designs composite sandwich structures with foam cores are gaining in importance in the automotive industry. To carry localized loads, sandwich structures require load introduction elements. In current solutions applied in the aerospace industry the inserts are embedded after the sandwich panels have been manufactured. This is very time consuming and therefore too expensive for automotive industry. In this paper, two new approaches are investigated experimentally, where the inserts get integrated during the preforming process or during the foam core manufacturing. With these manufacturing methods the performance and failure behavior of various insert geometries and different foam core densities will be determined by static pull out tests. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.