The plastic behavior of sandwich beams with core gradation

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to establish yielding criteria for a slender sandwich beam with two-layer metal foam cores under transverse loading. A unified yielding criterion for this geometrical or physical asymmetry four-layer metallic sandwich beam is established. Based on the yield criteria, an analytical solution for large deformation of fully clamped multilayer sandwich beams under transverse loading is presented. Comparisons of present solutions with numerical results are given and good agreements are obtained. Finally, the effects of core strength and thickness ratios on the large deflection responses of the sandwich beams with core gradation are discussed in detail. It is demonstrated that the present analytical model can reasonably predict the behavior of the plastic deformation of four layer sandwich beams.