SANDWICH STRUCTURES: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

摘要

The use of sandwich structures continues to increase rapidly for applications ranging from satellites, aircraft, ships, automobiles, rail cars, wind energy systems, and bridge construction to mention only a few. The many advantages of sandwich constructions, the development of new materials, and the need for high performance, low-weight structures insure that sandwich construction will continue to be in demand. The equations describing the behavior of sandwich structures are usually compatible with the equations developed for composite material thin-walled structures, simply by employing the appropriate in-plane, flexural, and transverse shear stiffness quantities. Only if a very flexible core is used, is a higher order theory needed.