The dynamics and vibration reduction characteristics of the clamped–clamped two sandwich beams jointed with clearance is studied theoretically and experimentally. A transverse and torsional spring system with clearance is used to equivalent the joint model. The homogenization method is used to equivalent the core layer and Rayleigh-Ritz method is utilized to derive the mode function of the interconnected sandwich beam by using a sequence of orthogonal polynomials. The nonlinear motion equation of the two jointed sandwich beam structure with clearance is derived by the application of the Hamilton principle and then solved using an improved Newmark integration approach. In order to validate the accuracy of the natural frequency and vibration mode, the finite element model is established. This paper examines the impact of clearance on the amplitude frequency response and vibration transmission of the two jointed sandwich beam structure, it is found the jointed sandwich beams show obvious nonlinear characteristics and intermittent vibration transmission phenomenon due to the clearance. Moreover, the vibration transmission analysis reveals that the existed clearance demonstrates significant vibration reduction effect, for which an experiment is conducted to validate the results. In general, this work proposes a novel approach for modeling sandwich structures with clearance with improved vibration reduction performance.