Emerging Materials and Design Strategies for Advanced Sandwich Structure Cores

Sandwich structures are widely employed in high-performance engineering applications due to their exceptional stiffness-to-weight and strength-to-weight ratios. By combining thin, stiff face sheets with lightweight core materials, these structures enable significant weight reduction while maintaining mechanical efficiency. Traditionally, core configurations such as honeycombs and polymeric foams have dominated industrial applications in aerospace, marine, automotive, and civil engineering sectors. However, increasing demands for improved impact resistance, fatigue durability, multifunctionality, and sustainability are driving the development of advanced core materials and innovative design strategies. Recent advances in lattice architectures, cellular solids, metamaterials, and additive manufacturing techniques have expanded the design space for sandwich structure cores. These emerging solutions offer unprecedented opportunities to tailor mechanical performance, energy absorption, thermal behavior, and structural reliability for next-generation lightweight systems.Despite their widespread use, the full potential of sandwich structures is still limited by challenges related to core material performance, damage tolerance, long-term durability, and manufacturing scalability. Conventional core solutions often struggle to simultaneously achieve high stiffness, impact resistance, fatigue life, multifunctionality, and cost-effectiveness. Moreover, the increasing demand for lightweight and sustainable systems calls for innovative materials and optimized design methodologies capable of meeting stricter mechanical and environmental requirements. This Research Topic aims to address these challenges by exploring emerging core materials, advanced architectural concepts, and novel design strategies for next-generation sandwich structures. Particular attention will be given to lattice and cellular materials, metamaterial-inspired cores, bio-based and recyclable solutions, and the integration of additive manufacturing technologies. Contributions focusing on multiscale modeling, structural optimization, experimental characterization, damage mechanisms, and performance under extreme loading conditions are especially encouraged. By combining material innovation with advanced design approaches, this Topic seeks to advance the development of safer, lighter, and more efficient sandwich structural systems.This Research Topic welcomes high-quality contributions addressing emerging materials, architectures, and design strategies for advanced sandwich structure cores. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: - architected lattice and cellular materials.- metamaterial-inspired core concepts. - bio-based and sustainable core solutions. - multifunctional and hybrid core systems. - additive and advanced manufacturing techniques. - multiscale modeling and simulation. - topology and structural optimization. - damage mechanisms, impact and fatigue behavior. - performance under extreme or complex loading conditions. - experimental characterization of novel core architectures.Interdisciplinary studies bridging materials science, structural mechanics, and manufacturing are particularly encouraged. Both fundamental and application-oriented research are welcome.We invite submissions in the form of Original Research articles, Review papers, Mini-Reviews, Editorial and Perspectives that provide forward-looking insights into next-generation sandwich structural systems. Topic editors: Antonio Viscusi, Massimo DURANTE Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/79572/emerging-materials-and-design-strategies-for-advanced-sandwich-structure-cores