Material Investigation for Navy Composite Sandwich Panel Solutions

There are various performance drivers that affect composite sandwich panel construction for Navy applications. Among these drivers are fire performance, structural properties, impact resistance, durability and cost. The sandwich panel material system includes the core material, the facings, the resin system and secondary coatings or facings; all of which can be varied to obtain specific sandwich panel properties. Currently, there is no single material system that provides excellent performance in all of the above areas; in fact many performance drivers run counter to each other when attempting to optimize materials for a given application. This makes material selection problematic and can lead to a circular approval pattern where one group's design drivers can steer the material selection such that it negatively affects performance in other areas or overall panel cost. This program will evaluate several material systems for use onboard Navy ships, these material systems include PVC foam core and balsa cores as well as various forms of the TYCORr material. An array of constructions that have varying degrees of fire performance, weight and cost will be manufactured and tested with the goal of identifying multiple material combinations that are both cost and weight effective, and offer fire protection that is tailorable to the fire threat for the application.