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Abstract
For several decades it has been possible to observe a tendency to light structures, particularly when they are destined to develop power and movement by consuming energy, especially when this energy derives from conventional fuel (petroleum derivates).
Lighter means of transport permit savings on fuel consumption and contribute to the environmental protection due to the reduction of greenhouse gases. The first approach in this direction had been the utilization of innovative materials able to offer further improved mechanical strength.
Nevertheless, this way presents natural limits depending on the loss of rigidity, hence excessive deformability even in the elastic field. This fact leads to the necessity to add stiffeners and reinforcing elements, but this at the same time means increase again the heaviness. Under these conditions more complex structural solutions step forward as the ‘sandwich’-structures manufacturable in a modular way provided with remarkable versatility in terms of design and choice of material. In the 1990s a European research project named ‘Sandwich’ financed by the European Union had given a significant contribution to the industrialization of structural solutions, which present a high level of innovations using aforementioned structures.
The present work proposes a preliminary study and several results of an investigation, which has as the main subject the production of innovative structural sandwich panels, in other words hybrid-sandwich panels in steel-aluminium assembled using two different joining technologies as laser and FSW, which can successively be connected as well to steel structures as to aluminium ones.
Notes
Paper presented at the 4th National Welding Day, Workshop: ‘New frontiers in laser, FSW, and EB welding processes’ Genoa, 25–26 October 2007.