Buckling and postbuckling of soft-core sandwich plates with composite facesheets

Abstract

Finite element analysis is conducted to investigate the effect of coupling between the stiff facesheets and the flexible core on the stability of sandwich plates. The facesheets and the core are treated separately as three-dimensional solids. Initially, linear buckling analysis was carried out to determine the buckling loads for a wide range of the facesheet stiffness and core stiffness. Numerical results indicate that, for sandwich plates with a soft core such as PVC foam, the model that smears the facesheets and core overestimates the initial buckling load, demonstrating the importance of treating the facesheets and the core separately. Subsequently, postbuckling analysis was carried out. Numerical results show that, for sandwich plates with a soft core, the postbuckling behavior is unstable in that static equilibrium cannot be maintained once the buckling initiates.