Development of Family of Super Convergent Shear Deformable Finite Elements for the Analysis of Sandwich Beams with Soft Core

摘要

Sandwich structures are widely used in aerospace and naval industries as they are light in weight and have high energy absorption capacities. Sandwich beams with soft core are the most commonly used structures in many applications. Analysis of sandwich beams is the key in its design and the development of new family of super convergent shear deformable finite elements are presented in this article. In this article, formulation of three different Super Convergent shear deformable finite elements with 4, 7, and 10 degrees of freedom respectively, for analysis of the sandwich beams with soft core are presented. The formulation considers the top, bottom face sheets and core as separate entities and are coupled by beam kinematics. The performance of these elements are validated by results available in the published literature. The article highlights the issues with the traditional elements for modeling sandwich beams and the advantages of the elements developed, in particular wave propagation analysis, are addressed in this article.