Partially Zig-Zag Advanced Higher Order Shear Deformation Theories Based on the Generalized Unified Formulation

Abstract

The Generalized Unified Formulation (GUF) is a multi-theory and a multi-fidelity architecture for the generation of a virtually infinite class of Advanced Higher Order Shear Deformation Theories (AHSDT) or Zig-Zag theories or Layer-Wise (LW) theories with any order of expansion for each of the primary variables. This work will present, for the first time in the literature, an extension of GUF to address problems in which every single variable can have either an Equivalent Single Layer (ESL) or a Zig-Zag-enhanced ESL description [Partially Zig-Zag Advanced Higher Order Shear Deformation Theories (PZZAHSDT)]. Applications to the case of thick sandwich structures are presented: starting from a baseline fourth-order AHSDT which also includes the transverse strain effects, all the possible types of PZZAHSDT are generated and compared with the baseline and with a fourth-order fully Zig-Zag theories.