Honeycomb core

The Mosquito was a laminated wood monocoque design that although unusual, was not new. More uniquely, the monocoque shell was fabricated by gluing plywood skins to balsa wood core. This construction foreshadowed the popular honeycomb core/facesheet aluminum and composite designs of later years. Fuselage halves of the Mosquito were formed in closed wooden female tools (tools... 

Fig. 6. Adhesive fillet on honeycomb core. Reproduced by permission of the Boeing Company.

Adhesives for sandwich bonding progressed similarly. Early low-flow adhesives were used with plastic foam cores and end-grain balsa to manufacture sandwich as.semblies. The development of less dense honeycomb cores necessitated a change in adhesive. Development of good bond strength to honeycomb core requires relatively high flow so that an adhesive fillet forms on the core walls (Fig. 6). 

Table 2 Adhesive strength requirements for honeycomb core bonding...

Applications such as the noise attenuation panels that line engine inlets and exhausts require a special form of high temperature adhesive known as a reticulating adhesive. These bond honeycomb sandwich assemblies have inner facesheets with numerous small holes (Fig. 13). The holes and underlying honeycomb core... 

Honeycomb core. Honeycomb core used for aluminum bonded sandwich structure is exclusively aluminum. The core is fabricated by printing offset stripes of adhesive (the node adhesive) on aluminum foil, stacking a large number of these foils and then curing the adhesive in a heated press. The resulting block is called a hobe. Slices are machined from the edge of the hobe and then expanded to... 

Honeycomb core parts are usually supplied from the core manufacturer clean and packaged in such a way that additional cleaning is not necessary. If this is not the case or if secondary machining is necessary, the core detail is cleaned by vapor degreasing or emulsion cleaning to remove organic contaminants. 

During the temperature ramp period, pressure is applied. How much pressure is applied depends on the adhesive and the type of assembly. Honeycomb assemblies are limited by the compression strength of the honeycomb core, so cure pressure is typically limited to 50 psi for aluminum core of standard density. Metal to metal assemblies can withstand higher pressures and usually have fewer bondline voids when cured at higher pressures. Metal-to-metal assemblies bonded with standard modified epoxies are cured at 90 psi. 

If an assembly is destructively inspected, the verification film is used to identify potential problem areas for particular attention. These areas and others randomly selected are cross-sectioned to determine bondline thickness (Fig. 22), bond details are peeled apart to inspect for voids and honeycomb core bonds are... 

In-service issues. As mentioned previously, many early service failures of bonded structure were due to adherend surface treatments that were unstable in long-term exposure to water. A majority of these problems were resolved by the adoption of surface treatments such as chromic and phosphoric acid anodize for aluminum details. The remaining few were alleviated by the adoption of phosphoric acid anodized honeycomb core and foaming adhesives resistant to water passage. Other service durability issues such as the cracking of brittle potting compound used to seal honeycomb sandwich assemblies, and subsequent delamination, have been minor in scope. 

Repair. Repairs for damaged bonded structure can be either mechanical or adhesively bonded. Mechanical repairs are metallic doublers on one or both sides of a damaged component, held on by fasteners. The fasteners transfer the load through the doubler around the damaged site and restore part functionality. Although common for metal-to-metal bonded structure, mechanical repair of sandwich structure is rare because of the risk of further delamination. Unless the doubler and fasteners are perfectly sealed, water can travel into the honeycomb core eventually causing freeze-thaw damage and delamination. 

For the composite spoiler design, the bottom is a variable-thickness skin on one side in Figure 1-33, but with composite materials that construction is not difficult. We do not have to chem-mill a composite material to change its thickness. All we do is stop building up the material in layers in the middle, but continue to build it up at the sides. That s a very natural process for composite materials and does not involve a costly machining operation. Instead of machined extruded stiffeners, a honeycomb core is placed on the inside of the laminae. That honeycomb... 

Insofar as configurations go, we might see a Kevlar skin over a Nomex honeycomb core as the primary fuselage for a relatively small... 

In addition to developing solid RP structures, work has been conducted on sandwich structures such as filament-wound plastic skins with low-density foamed core or a plastic honeycomb core to develop more efficient strength-to-weight structures. Sandwich structures using a syntactic core have been successfully tested so that failures occurred at prescribed high-hydrostatic pressures of 28 MPa (4,000 psi). 

Different core materials are used. They include foam, honeycomb core (plastic, paper, aluminum, etc.), ribs, balsa wood, filler spacers, corrugated sheet spacers, etc. Materials such as polyurethane foam, cellulosic foams, and polystyrene foams are widely used as core materials. Plastics, such as glass-reinforced polyester, are frequently used as the skins for panels. Different skin materials are used such as metallic skins alone or in conjunction with plastic skins. 

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