Manufacturing by filament winding of hybrid metal/foam composite parts: experimental and numerical analysis of flexural behaviour

The subject of this paper is to realize a metal/composite hybrid component constituted by a cylindrical core in aluminum foam and an outer layer in epoxy cycom 5216/S2-glass. The filament winding has been used to produce the composite shell by depositing a prepreg slip tape on an aluminum foam cylinder. The goal of this research work is to estimate, by experimental and numerical activity, the improvement of the hybrid component characteristics in comparison with those of the single parts (metal foam cylinder and epoxy/S2-glass tube). Three-point bending tests have been considered and three types of specimens have been tested: i) metal foam cylinders; ii) epoxy/S2-glass tubes; iii) hybrid metal foam/composite components. The developed analysis has allowed to estimate the first results about the manufacturing of hybrid metal foam/composite components and, in particular, to note that the maximum load and the adsorbed energy values of the hybrid component are higher than those of the sum of the single parts.