Compressive performance of full-scale GFRP composite sandwich wall panels with wood core

This paper investigated the compressive behaviors of sandwich wall panels consisting of glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) face sheets and Paulownia wood core experimentally and numerically. Vacuum-assisted resin infusion molding (VARIM) process was used to produce GFRP sandwich wall panel specimens. Four full-scale wall panels with different heights were tested under axial loading to study their failure modes and load-bearing capacities. The results revealed that buckling was the main failure mode of GFRP wall panels under the axial compression and the ultimate load-bearing capacities of specimens were improved the decrease of the height-to-thickness ratio. Experiments showed that decreasing the height-to-thickness ratio from 51.5 to 38.6 can effectively improve the ultimate load-bearing capacities of the wall panels by 124%. The experimental results were compared with finite element analysis (FEA) and analytical results were in good agreement. In addition, an equation was used to predict the load-bearing capacities of the wall panels suitable for the specimens with smaller height-to-thickness ratio.