Mechanical performance of innovative GFRP-bamboo-wood sandwich beams: Experimental and modelling investigation

Innovative GFRP-bamboo-wood sandwich beams were developed and investigated experimentally and by modeling. The effects of the thickness of the GFRP and bamboo layers on the overall structural performance in bending were clarified. It was shown that an increase of thickness of the bamboo and GFRP layers could significantly increase the flexural stiffness and ultimate load of the sandwich beams. ANSYS was used to parametrically analyze the material efficiency and to obtain optimal solutions for the thickness of the GFRP, wood, and bamboo layers. The total depth of 60 mm and the thickness of 6 mm for bamboo and of 4.5 mm for GFRP presented the best material efficiency in terms of stiffness enhancement. A simplified model based on Timoshenko beam theory was proposed to predict the load-deflection behavior of the sandwich beams, where the section transformation method was used to calculate the stress distribution along the depth of the sandwich beams. The calculated results showed good correlation with the experimental and numerical results. Design optimization in terms of self-weight and cost of the proposed sandwich beam was conducted using MATLAB and ANSYS, and the optimized thicknes was obtained with minimized self-weight, cost, and acceptable mechanical performance. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.