Techno Press
Techno Press

Structural Engineering and Mechanics
  Volume 12, Number 4, October 2001 , pages 363-376
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12989/sem.2001.12.4.363
 


A General approach to the wrinkling instability of sandwich plates
Walter K. Vonach and Franz G. Rammerstorfer(Austria)

 
Abstract
    Sandwich plates are widely used in lightweight design due to their high strength and stiffness
to weight ratio. Due to the heterogeneous structure of sandwich plates, they can exhibit local instabilities
(wrinkling), which lead to a sudden loss of stiffness in the structure. This paper presents an analytical
solution to the wrinkling problem of sandwich plates. The solution is based on the Rayleigh-Ritz method,
by assuming an appropriate deformation field. In contrast to the other approaches up to now, this model
takes arbitrary and different orthotropic face layers, finite core thickness and orthotropic core material into
account. This approach is the first to cover the wrinkling of unsymmetric sandwiches and sandwiches
composed of orthotropic FRP face layers, which are most common in advanced lightweight design. Despite
the generality of the solution, the computational effort is kept within bounds. The results have been
verified using other analytical solutions and unit cell 3D FE calculations.
 
Key Words
    sandwich; instability; wrinkling; elastic foundation; shell; plate; buckling; orthotropy.
 
Address
Walter K. Vonach and Franz G. Rammerstorfer, Institute of Lightweight Structures and Aerospace Engineering, Vienna University of Technology, Gusshausstrasse 27-29, A-1040 Wien, Austria
 

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