Originally Posted by
catahoula
I also wouldn't dismiss what Pete is saying about local vs global stiffness. The products that do use foam as core in panels structually, i.e. boats, etc, use the foam to create panels with high-modulus materials on BOTH sides of a relatively thin foam core, so that the high-modulus skins are doing most of the work. And, these structures as Pete noted may have good global stiffness due to the shape, but generally poor local stiffness. On lightweight boat hulls "oilcanning" is definitely a thing.