The crashworthiness performance of integrally woven sandwich composite panels made using natural and glass fibers

As a way to save petroleum resources, considerable efforts were made in the last three decades to develop green composites. Green composites are a category of composite materials in which at least one phase (reinforcement or matrix) is made from renewable resources. An attempt was made to present a simple fabrication process to produce hollow integrally woven sandwich composites. In addition, the potential of jute fibers to be utilized as piles in the core of an integrally woven sandwich composite was assessed and compared to the counterparts made using glass fibers. The crashworthiness performances of integrally woven sandwich composite samples considering the effect of relative density, pile material and the presence of polyurethane foam were investigated through performing quasi-static flat-wise compression tests. Based on the findings, the foam-filled integrally woven sandwich composites exhibited stable compression load-displacement response and better energy absorption properties over pure foam, which make them appropriate for automobile interior components. Moreover, a computational cost-efficient finite element modeling was presented and subsequently validated with experimental results.