Thermal–mechanical properties of aluminum cylindrical sandwich structures with foldcores

Nowadays sandwich structures with foldcores have extensive applications in aviation and aerospace fields, which are considered better than honeycomb sandwich structures to some extent. This paper explores the thermal–mechanical properties of cylindrical sandwich structures (CSS) with four kinds of foldcores, including Axial Miura, Circumferential Miura, Diamond, and Kresling foldcores. Sequential coupled thermal stress simulation and axial compression simulation with ABAQUS are implemented to aluminum CSS with the four kinds of foldcores, which are subjected to mono-direction heat flux. Moreover, the simulation results are compared with that of CSS with honeycomb core, and compared the thermal mechanical properties of different structures and different \(N\) (the number of unit cell in one circle). It is found that with the increase of \(N\), the thermal mechanical properties of CSS with Axial and Circumferential Miura foldcores become better. Besides, CSS with multi-layered foldcores exhibit more uniform temperature distribution, which is favored in design of satellite. In addition, the strength and the stiffness of CSS increase as \(N\) increases and are lower with mono-direction heat flux than without heat flux. Especially, CSS with two-layered Axial Miura foldcores exhibit better thermal–mechanical properties than all the other models.