Improved manufacturing method and mechanical performances of carbon fiber reinforced lattice-core sandwich cylinder

•Thin-walled lattice sandwich cylinder is fabricated and tested.•Improved making method restricted skin delamination and skin crippling.•Mono-cell bucking and strength failure dominate the designing of the cylinder.

Filament winding and twice co-curing processes were applied to make advanced carbon fiber reinforced composite (CFRC) sandwich cylinder with lattice cores. Split metallic moulds were designed and adopted for easy demoulding after winding the lattice core. The cylinders were designed with a small tapering to assure tight contact between the lattice core and the inner skin. To avoid local failure at the end of the cylinder, flange structures were placed continuously from the fibers of skins and lattices. Axial compression was carried out to reveal the mechanical behaviors of the fabricated sandwich cylinder. The experiment shows that the advanced making technology shows the promise of lattice sandwich cylinder (LSC) avoiding instability, local buckling, local cracking and debonding.