Analysis of Mechanical Characteristics of Polymer Sandwich Panels Containing Injection Molded and 3D Printed Pyramidal Kagome Cores

Additive manufacturing or 3D printing is a new manufacturing process and its application is getting growth.
However, the product qualities such as mechanical strength, dimensional accuracy, and surface quality are low compared with conventional manufacturing process such as molding and machining. In this study not only mechanical characteristics of polymer sandwich panel having three dimensional core layer but also mechanical characteristics of core layer itself were analyzed. The shape of three dimensional core layer was pyramidal kagome structure. This core layer was fabricated by two different methods, injection molding with PP resin and material jetting type 3D printing with acrylic photo curable resin. The material for face sheets in the polymer sandwich panel was PP. Maximum load, stiffness, and elongation at break were examined for core layers fabricated by two different methods and also assembled polymer sandwich panels. 3D printed core showed brittle behavior, but the brittleness decreased in polymer sandwich panel containing 3D printed core. The availability of 3D printed article for the three dimensional core layer of polymer sandwich panel was verified.