Moslem Najafi - Ph.D. Student, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Guilan, Rasht, Iran

This study analyzes the buckling behavior of balsa cored sandwich materials, which are commonly used as the bulkhead in the high-speed crafts structure. The sandwich specimens are prepared under different manufacturing conditions by changing the core density, the nano SiO2 content at interfacial region between skins and core, and the nano SiO2 content within the composite skins. The critical buckling load is adopted as the quality target. Experiments of nine experimental runs are based on an orthogonal array table and apply the Taguchi method approach to determine an optimal parameter setting. In this study, the identified models were utilized to predict the buckling properties of sandwich structures at each considered combination of input variables.

Taguchi method/Buckling properties/Sandwich structures/Balsa wood/Nano SiO2