MANUFACTURING AND APPLICATIONS OF STRUCTURAL SANDWICH COMPONENTS

Techniques to manufacture sandwich components for structural applicati ons are summarized and discussed in terms of processing steps, charact eristics of both technique and manufactured components, and applicatio n examples. The emphasis is on the commercially most common manufactur ing techniques, though less common processing routes are briefly discu ssed as well. The intentions of this review are twofold: first, the pa per aims to provide a means of comparing available manufacturing techn iques in terms of feasibility for a specific application; second, the paper aims to provide a baseline for further research and development efforts in the field of sandwich manufacture. A discussion of recent d evelopments and future trends in terms of both materials and processin g routes rounds up the paper. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Limi ted.