Experimental and numerical free vibration analysis of composite sandwich cylindrical shells with lozenge cores

Due to unique properties, lattice composite shells are used extensively in aviation, marine and automotive industry. The aim of this research is experimental and numerical free vibration analysis of composite sandwich cylindrical shells with lozenge cores. For the fabrication of this shells, silicone mold, filament winding, and hand lay-up method were used. Stiffened shells and simple shells are fabricated, separately. Then, composite sandwich cylindrical shells with lozenge cores were created by attaching the two parts together. The modal test is done on the shells and natural frequencies have been extracted. The comparison of experimental results and, numerical results obtained from Abaqus showed that there is a good agreement between them. By using Taguchi method, a parametric study was performed on the vibrational behavior of sandwich shells with lozenge cores via six parameters that such as stiffeners’ pair number, stiffener thickness, unit cell number, skin thickness, layers sequence and boundary condition. The results show that the natural frequency has a most sensitive to the boundary condition, skin thickness and least sensitive to stiffener thickness, layers sequence. To evaluate the efficiency of a sandwich shell, the natural frequency of sandwich shell are compared with simple shell in the different boundary condition. The results show that the natural frequency of sandwich shell with lozenge core is 176% and 34% higher than an equivalent simple shell at free and clamp boundary condition, respectively.