Abstract :
Composite is one of materials in engineering which is made by composing two sort of
materials that have different characteristics to be one new material with different
characteristics too. One of composite is cork/sterofoam which has been developed in
aeromodeling especially to make wing as an alternative material substituting metal material.
This because of the strong composite characteristic and its weight is lighter than metal.
In this research, the composite was balsa wood material and sterofoam by the variation
of 2 mm, 4 mm, 6 mm skin. This research purposed to observe the balsa wood skin thickness
influence of sandwich composite toward the increased bending strength.
The research result showed that the increased thickness of skin could increase the
bending strength value on sandwich composite by the 6 mm skin thickness which had the
highest bending strength value by 3,348 Mpa. The failure pattern stage of sandwich
composite was the pulling failure of the beneath skin composite, core fricative failure, upper
skin composite delamination with core and upper skin composite failure