Design of profiled sandwich panels subject to local buckling effects

摘要

Profiled sandwich panels subjected to local buckling failures are designed using conventional effective width principles included in the current design documents. However, a recent study of foam-supported thin steel plates using laboratory experiments and numerical analyses showed that conventional effective width principles cannot be used for plate elements with very high width to thickness (b/t) ratios. A modified design rule has been developed based on the results from experiments and numerical analyses. In this study, a series of full-scale experiments on profiled sandwich panels subjected to wind pressure loading were conducted to investigate the accuracy of the new design rule. Experimental results were compared with predictions from both the current and modified design rules. The comparison confirmed that the new improved design rule can accurately predict the strength of profiled sandwich panels. However, the current design method overestimates the strength in comparison with the experimental results. This paper presents the details of the new improved design rule and full scale experiments, the results, and comparisons with predictions from design rules.