the use of sandwich core

DuPont granted Dream (10/6/06) usage rights of the chart near the middle of this page. It illustrates the substantial gain that can be obtained through the use of sandwich core. As you can see below, when the distance between skins is increased to 4t, the striffness increases by 37 times and the strength increases by 9.2 times, yet weight is only increased by 6%. Dream routinely produces sandwich cored composites with 8-10+ t. The inverse of this is to use a core to arrive at a given stiffness required in, say, metal but the carbon fiber sandwich core will be exceptionally light compared to its metal counterpart. The other two main benefits of the advanced composite part are that its CTE is extremely low (zero or negative, depending on project requirements) and it does not have problems with liquids: corrosion and/or chemical issues, etc.

There are two main types of core material: honeycomb and foam. Within each are variations, like "honeycombs" that are actually triangular shapes, hexagonal shapes, etc.. Within each of the two main types of core is a myriad of different raw materials they can be made from. This can be anything from paper to Kevlar (Nomex is an example) to plastics to carbon fiber to ceramics, etc. The use of core lessons the number of layers of advanced composites needed and therefore resin used. Resin is far heavier than fiber. So sandwich cores are lighter for this reason as well. The main disadvantage to using core is that it makes part design and fabrication much, much more complex. Dream specializes in the use of sandwich core and is intimately familiar with how to deal with its unique design challenges. Both from a fabrication standpoint but also from a design standpoint so the part truly does outperform all other choices.

pricing, availability and specifications subject to change without notice