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- Standard / ASTM-C297
ASTM C297
ASTM C297
ASTM C297 is the ASTM International standard that measures the flatwise tensile strength of the core, the core-to-facing bond, or the facing of an assembled sandwich panel; both continuous bonding surfaces (balsa wood, foams) and discontinuous bonding surfaces (honeycomb) types of cores are permitted. Widespread use across aerospace, automotive, marine, and composite manufacturing industries, where the sandwich panel structural integrity is crucial. Precision tensile testing instruments in Presto Stantest can be used by the manufacturers to perform flatwise tensile strength tests under controlled conditions in a lab with compliance to ASTM C297.
Significance
For a sandwich panel, it is important to achieve core-to-facing bond integrity so that it ensures facing stability and will enable load to be transferred between the face and core. This test method is primarily intended for the quality control acceptance testing of bonded sandwich panels, but it may be used for obtaining flatwise tensile strength data for structural design properties, material specifications, and research and development applications. These quantitative results are useful for manufacturers to verify the quality of adhesive bonding, improve manufacturing processes, and guarantee that panels can meet their defined structural performance parameters before use. Scope This test method is applicable to the determination of the core flatwise tension strength or strength of the bond between the core and facings of an assembled sandwich panel and consists of a tensile test performed on a sandwich construction under a tensile load applied normal to the plane of the sandwich construction through thick loading blocks, which are bonded to the sandwich facings or directly to the core. To be reported are factors that affect the flatwise tensile strength, such as facing material, core material, adhesive material, core geometry, core density, adhesive thickness, and specimen geometry.