Ultra-light CRH wind deflector fabricated by woven lattice sandwich composites

• Design method of sandwich structures replacing solid laminate was proposed.
• Design method of hierarchical sandwich wind deflector of CRH was proposed.
• Hierarchical sandwich structure makes the new deflector much stronger and stiffer.
• Hierarchical sandwich wind deflector has a mass reduction more than 50%.

An alternative design method was suggested to design an ultra-light hierarchical wind deflector fabricated by woven lattice sandwich composites (WLSCs). The alternative method is based on the criterion that the alternative sandwich structure should have equal bending strength and bending rigidity to the replaced solid composite laminate. Two alternative structures for wind deflectors were suggested and analyzed based on corresponding structural models. Stress and strain predictions were well consistent with the experiments, which reveal that adopting hierarchical WLSC structure, the new designed wind deflector has greater load capacity, and meanwhile the weight is reduced at a level of more than 50%.