Theoretical and experimental investigation of local bending effects in sandwich plates

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a combined theoretical and experimental investigation of local bending effects in a clamped circular foam-cored sandwich plate subjected to a central point load. The theoretical investigation was conducted using an approximate method of local bending analysis, where the basic approach is to consider the deflection of the loaded face as being governed by a two-parameter elastic foundation model, which takes into account the existence of shearing interaction effects between the loaded face and the core material. The experimental investigation was conducted using a holographic interferometry technique, from which detailed information about the displacement field of the loaded face was obtained. Comparison between the theoretical and experimental displacement fields revealed a very convincing agreement, thus showing that the simple elastic foundation approach provides a good description of the local bending phenomenon.