Minimum weights of pressurized hollow sandwich cylinders with ultralight cellular cores

Abstract

Long, open-ended, hollow sandwich cylinders with ultralightweight cellular cores are optimized under uniform internal pressure for minimum weight design. Five different core topologies are considered: Kagomé truss, single-layered pyramidal truss, double-layered pyramidal truss, single-layered corrugated core and double-layered corrugated core. The highly porous cellular materials are homogenized to obtain effective constitutive relations. Close-formed solutions are presented for the forces and stresses in individual structural members of the sandwich, which are then validated by finite element calculations. Optimization of the sandwich-walled hollow cylinder is achieved using a quadratic optimizer, subjected to the constraints that none of the following failure modes occurs: facesheet yielding; facesheet punch shearing (active only for truss-cored sandwiches); core member buckling; core member yielding. In comparison with hollow cylinders having solid walls, truss-core sandwich cylinders and single-layer corrugated core sandwich cylinders are found to have superior weight advantages, especially for more heavily loaded cases. With the consideration of both weight efficiency and failure modes, sandwich-walled hollow cylinders having Kagomé truss core with pyramidal sub-geometry have the best overall performance in comparison with other core topologies.