Ultra high strength steel sandwich for lightweight applications

Methods for reducing weight of structural elements are important for a sustainable society. Over the recent years ultra high strength steel (UHSS) has been a successful material for designing light and strong components. Sandwich panels are interesting structural components to further explore areas where the benefits of UHSS can be utilized. The specific properties of sandwich panels make them suitable for stiffness applications and various cores have been studied extensively. In the present work, bidirectionally corrugated UHSS cores are studied experimentally and numerically. A UHSS core is manufactured by cold rolling and bonded to the skins by welding. Stiffness is evaluated experimentally in three-point bending. The tests are virtually reproduced using the finite element method. Precise discretization of the core requires large amounts of computational power, prolonging lead times for sandwich component development, which in the present work is addressed by homogenization, using an equivalent material formulation. Input data for the equivalent models is obtained by characterizing representative volume elements of the periodic cores under periodic boundary conditions. The homogenized panel reduces the number of finite elements and thus the computational time while maintaining accuracy. Numerical results are validated and agree well with experimental testing. Important findings from experimental and simulation results show that the suggested panels provide superior specific bending stiffness as compared to solid panels. This work shows that lightweight UHSS sandwiches with excellent stiffness properties can be manufactured and modeled efficiently. The concept of manufacturing a UHSS sandwich panel expands the usability of UHSS to new areas.