Experimental study on the fatigue performance of aluminum foam sandwich with 304 stainless steel face-sheet

This work focused on aluminum foam sandwich (AFS) with different foam core densities and different face-sheet thicknesses subjected to constant amplitude three-point bending cyclic loading to study its fatigue performance. The experiments were conducted out by a high frequency fatigue test machine named GPS-100. The experimental results showed that the fatigue life of AFS decreased with the increasing loading level and the structure was sensitive to cyclic loading, especially when the loading level was under 20%. S-N curves of nine groups of AFS specimens were obtained and the fatigue life of AFS followed three-parameter lognormal distribution well. AFS under low cyclic loading showed pronounced cyclic hardening and the static strength after fatigue test increased. For the same loading level, effects of foam core density and face-sheet thickness on the fatigue life of AFS structure were trade-off and for the same loading value, the fatigue life of AFS increased with aluminum foam core density or face-sheet thickness monotonously. Core shear was the main failure mode in the present study.