Flexural response of additive-manufactured honeycomb sandwiches for marine structural applications

Light-weight structures, such as honeycomb sandwiches, have been demonstrated to have high potential in reducing ship weight and, in turn, fuel consumption and emissions while increasing the load-carrying capacity. In parallel, innovative technologies, such as additive manufacturing (AM), are established as effective solutions for producing light-weight structural components with enhanced performance. The vision driving the study is that the key enabling technology of AM provides disruptive design flexibility to develop and integrate innovative marine structural solutions. However, to achieve such an objective, an in-depth investigation of the structural response of components produced by AM is necessary to exploit their potential fully. Given such a framework, the study aims analysing the flexural response of Additive Manufactured Honeycomb Sandwich structures (AMHS) for marine structural applications. Three-point bending tests were conducted on multi-material and multi-layer composite AMHS specimens produced by an innovative AM technique. A numerical model, which correlates experimental results with ship structural design principles, was developed to predict the AMHS structural response. Moreover, the study provides insight into the failure mechanism of AMHS by de-coupling the progressively occurring compressive failure modes. This research is the first step in creating efficient design and manufacturing procedures for marine structural applications of AMHS.