Investigation on the behaviour of fully thermoplastic composite sandwich beams under concentrated loads

The recent development of new low cost manufacturing processes adopting thermoplastic matrices in the production of structural long fibre reinforced laminates is fostering an increasing interest towards this class of materials. The automotive sector in particular is attracted by the high energy absorbing, damage tolerance performances and manufacturing and recycling potentials of structural thermoplastic composites. In this study a number of fully thermoplastic sandwich beams have been manufactured in order to investigate flexural and shear rigidity performances as well as the indentation behavior under static concentrated loads.