ABSTRACT
The necessity to increase the structural efficiency unceasingly continues based on the technological developments in the materials universe. In this respect, the sandwich materials have emerged as structural members in many engineering fields to increase stiffness with reduced weight. However, while the sandwiches constructed by the lightweight and stiff materials provide better load-bearing capacities, their damage behavior might worsen and catastrophic failures may occur during operation. To overcome such drawbacks, some researchers have put effort into hybrid material designs in sandwich applications. The metallic wire mesh sheets, in the porous form, provide better hybridization and can contribute to the mechanical properties of the hybrid composite structures by improving the adhesion between laminates and conducting bridging effect. In this chapter, the significance of the wire mesh sheets embedded into composites was revealed and the effects of them stacked within the fiber-reinforced composites were evaluated on the flexural behavior of the polymer foam core sandwiches. It has been observed that wire mesh hybridization enhanced the failure behavior of the sandwiches by increasing the flexural stiffness and load-carrying capacity and eliminating the sudden force drops, which are currently seen in polymer foam core sandwiches with fiber-reinforced face sheets.
