Computational analysis of a sandwich beam with FGM face sheets under flexural loading

Abstract

Functionally graded materials (FGM) are nonhomogeneous materials at the microscopic level, which have a gradation in their structure and composition with the properties of the material varying along one or more directions. The applications of these materials are in the fields: Aerospace, Automotive, Biomedical-Medical, Optoelectronics-electronics, Machinery, Energy, Marine, etc. In the present work the problem of a sandwich beam with metal core and FGM face sheets and a sandwich beam with ceramic core and FGM face sheets under flexural loading is studied numerically via the Finite Element Method. The load is a distributed load on the upper face sheet of the beam. The elements that will be used are 8-node two-dimensional plane quadrilateral isoparametric elements. The elements used for the FGM layers, are graded finite elements where as for the core are homogeneous elements. The advantage of this study is the utilization of 8-node two-dimensional plane quadrilateral graded isoparametric elements in the FGM face sheets, for the study of a sandwich beam. The effect of the volume fraction index on the stress fields is examined.