Equivalent in-plane elastic modulus of honeycomb sandwich in the direction of cell vertical wall

Abstract

The equivalent in-plane elastic modulus [Formula: see text] of a honeycomb sandwich in the direction of cell vertical wall can be assessed by the law of mixture from the modulus of face sheet [Formula: see text] and the equivalent modulus of honeycomb core [Formula: see text]. However, significant errors as large as 40% can be made depending on material and geometry parameters, when the used [Formula: see text] is obtained from a cellular model of core alone without considering the skin effect of face sheet. The main reason of the error is that the rigidity to deformation of y-direction is different greatly between the vertical cell wall of core and inclined cell wall of core. In the present paper, an analytical model is proposed to assess [Formula: see text] of honeycomb sandwich with considering the interference effect of the core with the face sheet. In the proposed model, the influence of the face sheet rigidity on [Formula: see text] is taken into account. The results demonstrate that the contribution of the core to [Formula: see text] is also dependent on the face sheet rigidity significantly. The validity of presented model is verified by comparing the results with numerical results of FEA.