Wrinkling of sandwich wide panels/beams based on the extended high-order sandwich panel theory: formulation, comparison with elasticity and experiments

Abstract

There exist several high-order sandwich panel theories, most notably, the first to be introduced high-order sandwich panel theory (HSAPT) assumes a constant shear stress in the core. Recently, the extended high-order sandwich panel theory (EHSAPT) was introduced, its novelty being that it allows for three generalized coordinates in the core (the axial and transverse displacements at the centroid of the core, and the rotation at the centroid of the core) instead of just one (shear stress in the core) of the earlier theory. In this paper, the EHSAPT formulation for predicting the critical wrinkling load is presented for a simply supported sandwich of general asymmetric construction. The cases of (i) applying the loading just on the face sheets with a linear core assumption and (ii) applying uniform strain loading throughout the thickness of the panel and a nonlinear core assumption are examined. The results are compared with a benchmark elasticity solution. In addition, edgewise compression experiments were conducted on glass face/Nomex honeycomb core and the ensuing wrinkling point is compared with the theoretical predictions. A comparison is also made with earlier edgewise compression experiments on aluminum face/granulated-cork core reported in literature. Other wrinkling formulas that are included in the comparison are: Hoff–Mautner and the HSAPT.