Paper Title
Investigation of the Effects of Core Thickness and Surface Orientation on Mechanical Properties of Sandwich Composite Sheets

Abstract
With the development of technology, there is a need for different materials to replace the traditional materials. One of these materials is sandwich structures. In this study, the bending behavior of sandwich composite structures was investigated experimentally. Balsa wood as core material. Glass fiber reinforced composites were selected for the bottom and top surfaces. The sandwich structure is produced by using vacuum infusion method. The effects of balsa thickness and glass fiber orientation angle on bending properties were investigated by three point bending test. As a result of the experiment, maximum normal stress on the bottom and top surfaces and the maximum shear stress on the interface were calculated. The effects of core material thickness and surface orientation angle on normal stress and shear stress were compared. In addition, the way balsa wood was fractured with help of high resolution industrial camera was examined. Index Terms - Balsa, Sandwich, Composite, Flexural