Overall Buckling and Wrinkling of Honeycomb Sandwich Panels Due to Compressive Loads: Analytical and Finite Element Results

Abstract

The paper discusses overall buckling and wrinkling of honeycomb sandwich panels with laminated faces. Both analytical and finite element methods are presented. The analytical method is based on an energy equation that is solved using Raleigh-Ritz method. The core is assumed as an anti-plane core. The finite element method uses 3-dimensional brick elements to model both the faces and the core. The finite element method is able to predict the overall buckling and wrinkling modes and compared well with the analytical results. The critical overall buckling and wrinkling loads are compared with the analytical and experimental data given by other authors. Mostly, they are in good agreements and the differences are varied in the range of 5%. The effect of core thickness was discussed. It shows that increasing the core thickness will change the failure mode from overall buckling to wrinkling failure. Increasing the core stiffness will also shift the failure modes to the overall buckling region. Face lay-up will influence also the behaviors of overall and wrinkling modes.