Geometric imperfection sensitivity and knockdown factor of corrugated sandwich curved plates and circular tubes

This dataset supports the study of geometric imperfection sensitivity and knockdown factors of corrugated-sandwich curved plates and circular tubes designed for solar-powered UAV wing beams. The research hypothesis is that the longitudinal corrugated-sandwich configuration has relatively low sensitivity to manufacturing-induced geometric imperfections, and that the knockdown factor of a complete circular tube under bending can be estimated from lower-cost compression tests and simulations of curved-plate specimens. The deposited Excel workbooks contain geometric deviation data, experimental measurements, finite element results, and statistical analysis results. Three curved-plate specimens manufactured using the same materials, layups, and processes as the complete tubes were scanned using a CREAFORM HandySCAN 700 laser scanner with a resolution of 0.050 mm and an accuracy of 0.03 mm. The measured deviation fields were characterized using evolutionary power spectra. Compression tests were conducted using an INSTRON universal testing machine, and the recorded data include load, displacement, strain, stiffness, ultimate load, and observed failure behavior. Finite element results are provided for ideal models, models containing boundary deviations, and models incorporating full-field measured geometric deviations. The data also include simulation results for 100 randomly generated curved-plate imperfection fields and 30 corresponding circular-tube models subjected to bending. The knockdown factor is defined as the ratio of the failure load or moment of an imperfect model to that of the corresponding ideal model; therefore, a value closer to 1 indicates lower imperfection sensitivity. The results show that the validated finite element models predict stiffness within 2% and ultimate load within 0.3%-5.1% of the experimental values. Surface imperfections reduce the ultimate load by approximately 5%-10%, whereas boundary deviations produce reductions of approximately 15%-20%. A strong positive correlation is observed between the knockdown factors of the curved plates and circular tubes, with the tube values generally being higher. Monte Carlo uncertainty propagation provides a conservative recommended knockdown factor of 0.75 for the bending design of this type of corrugated-sandwich circular tube. The dataset can be used to reproduce the reported comparisons, statistical distributions, regression analysis, and lower-bound knockdown-factor estimation.