Evaluating bending stiffness and resistance of sandwich panels at elevated temperatures

Abstract

The objective of this research is to develop a modeling and simulation approach for the bending stiffness of sandwich panels which have been verified and compared by experimental results in normal condition and fire case. For this purpose, polyisocyanurate (PIR) foam has been used as core material along with trapezoidal sheeting. In order to simulate the experiments, Finite Element (FE) software ABAQUS has been applied. The modelling process contains heat transfer analyses, mechanical analyses in normal condition and sequential analyses which includes the combination of both mechanical analyses and thermal analyses. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of fire on the bending stiffness and stabilization of sandwich panels. Although with increase in temperature the strength of panels decreases, this decline is not linear. The presented work should be considered as first step in STABFI project financed by Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS) which its purpose is to investigate translational and also torsional stiffness of sandwich panels as future work. STABFI stands for steel cladding systems for stabilization of steel buildings in fire.