Deformation and stress analysis of sandwich cylindrical shells with a flexible core using harmonic differential quadrature method

Abstract

In this paper, based on the high-order theory (HOT) of sandwich structures, the response of sandwich cylindrical shells with flexible core and any sort of boundary conditions under a general distributed static loading is investigated. The faces and the core are made of isotropic materials. The faces are modeled as thin cylindrical shells obeying the Kirchhoff–Love assumptions. For the core material, it is assumed to be thick and the in-plane stresses are negligible. The governing equations are derived using the principle of the stationary potential energy. Using harmonic differential quadrature method (HDQM), the equations are solved for deformation components. The obtained results are compared with finite element results for different sandwich shell configurations. Then, the effects of changing different parameters on the stress and displacement components of sandwich cylindrical shells are investigated. A comparison between HOT-HDQM and finite element results is presented for different sandwich shell configurations.