Measurements of the Bending Stiffness and Failure in 3-Point Bending of Irradiated and Non-irradiated Sandwich Beams

Introduction Four 120mm x 50mm x 5mm carbon-fibre/honeycomb sandwich beams were constructed from 3-ply (0/90/0) K13D2U/RS-3 (80gsm, 29%RC) carbon-fibre face sheets and UCF-126-3/8-2.0 honeycomb. Pairs of beams were assembled using two different adhesives: Henkel Hysol 9396 (1) and ACG VTA260 (2). Hysol 9396 is a two-part, room temperature curable, aerospace grade epoxy adhesive which has been extensively used in stave prototyping whilst ACG VTA260 is a glue film with cure temperatures ranging from 65C to 120C.