Determination of Mechanical Characteristics of a Hybrid Composite Material

Abstract

An important problem facing design engineers in the aerospace industry is how to achieve better design concepts by considering structure performance and manufacturing cost in the early stages of product development. One of the most important considerations in designing a space craft is weight. By reducing the weight of a spacecraft, it is easy to increase the pay load, which improves agility and reduces the launch cost. The structural and mechanical parts of a spacecraft generally represent a large percentage of its weight and, therefore, it is important to choose the proper material and structural configurations to minimize the weight. In many industrial applications reducing the weight of a structure without compromising its strength and stiffness is considered to be one of the most important design criteria. Today, the search of the best performance, quality and cost for space vehicles becomes a complex process. The purpose of this work is to perform a tensile test on honeycomb panels used in the satellites structural design. To fabricate the sandwich honey comb panel, Jute fibre sandwiched between the Glass fibres are used as face sheets and Glass fibre as core material, Epoxy as a bonding agent. The developed honeycomb panel is subjected to mechanical investigations as per ASTM standards to determine the tensile strength which is essential for structural design. The obtained results show a good experimental test results.