Structural stability for my Camper box build and materials selection.

[Buildingfreedom]

If you want it light, strong, and well insulated, then structural sandwich panels are the way to go. All the campers you've posted on here use them.

True and the sandwich panels are also easier to work, but I'm more interested on the safety insured by a farady cage than on a light weigh and very effective insulation. This is my personal position, after all it's an alternative to a steel made panel van (that will never be efficient about the internal space arrangement).

 

[rruff]

Wouldn't aluminum skins and foam core work?

 

[Fenderfour]

That's a popup, right? What does the panel underneath the cabover consist of (the one you sleep on)?

The OP is making a solid camper where the cabover is basically a very stout and short box beam. Totally different.

/shrug/
Beam analysis is beam analysis, it doesn't matter how short anything is, whether a camper is a pop-up or whatever. You can do beam analysis on your composite constructions as well, it's just a little more complicated.

Also, if you read some earlier posts, the OP wasn't proposing a short, stout beam. He was proposing a long flexible beam, which is why I did some quick analysis to show the selected material was likely to bend & break under normal loads.

 

[rruff]

In his case it isn't a cantilevered beam though, unlike the floor of the cabover on a pop-up. His initial sketch is missing the roof and a lot of the structure. By "box beam" I'm referring to the all sides of the cabover... it isn't held up by the lower beams but by the entire structure.