Behavior of Unidirectional Sandwich Panels With a Bi-Linear “Soft” Core: High Order Approach

A closed-form high-order theory for the analysis of a sandwich panel with a core made of a material characterized by a bi-linear constitutive relation is presented. The non-linearities in the core are a result of bi-linear constitutive relations of the shear and vertical normal stresses. The governing equations are non-linear in the longitudinal and in the vertical coordinates in general. The solution procedure adopted is an iterative one along with convergence criteria. The numerical examples include two types of core material behaviors; where the first one deals with a bi-linear constitutive relation for the shear stress only; and the second one with a bi-linear constitutive relation for vertical normal stresses only. The results demonstrate the relaxation of the stress concentration involves as the load level increase beyond the yielding level as the secant modulus decrease. In the sequel, a summary and conclusions are presented.