Manufacturing and applications of structural sandwich components

Techniques to manufacture sandwich components for structural applications are summarized and discussed in terms of processing steps, characteristics of both technique and manufactured components, and application examples. The emphasis is on the commercially most common manufacturing techniques, though less common processing routes are briefly discussed as well. The intentions of this review are twofold: first, the paper aims to provide a means of comparing available manufacturing techniques in terms of feasibility for a specific application; second, the paper aims to provide a baseline for further research and development efforts in the field of sandwich manufacture. A discussion of recent developments and future trends in terms of both materials and processing routes rounds up the paper. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Limited.