A high-order theory for cylindrical sandwich shells with flexible cores

Abstract

This paper presents a nonlinear high-order theory for cylindrical sandwich shells with flexible cores, extending a previously presented high-order theory for sandwich plates. The outer and inner faces are assumed to be relatively thin compared to the core and the effects from the core compressibility are addressed in the solution by incorporating the extended nonlinear core theory into the constitutive relations of the cylindrical shells. The governing equations and boundary conditions for the cylindrical shells are derived using a variational principle. Numerical results are presented for the cases where the two faces and the core are made of orthotropic materials. These results show that this model could capture the nonlinearity in the transverse stress distribution in the core of the cylindrical sandwich shell. Numerical results are presented on the details of the stress and displacement profiles for a cylindrical sandwich shell under localized external pressure. This study could have significance for the optimal design of advanced cylindrical sandwich shells.