334 Buckling Analysis of Corrugated Sandwich Plates with Soft Core Using Three-Dimensional Finite Element Method

In this paper, buckling behavior of a trapezoidal corrugated sandwich plate is studied. Finite element model of the symmetric and anti-symmetric sandwich plates with trapezoidal corrugated composite face sheets with glass fibers and epoxy matrix and a soft core is constructed in the ANSYS 12.0 standard code area using three-dimensional (3D) iso-parametric brick elements. The buckling modes of the sandwich plate under uniform transverse load are obtained and the effects of many parameters such as plate dimensions, trapezoidal shape and material properties of the core and face sheets on the buckling behavior of the present corrugated sandwich plate are studied. Also, the effects of various boundary conditions such as all edges simply supported (SSSS) and a combined boundary condition (SCSC) are investigated in the present paper. Comparison of the present results in special case with those of plate theories confirms the accuracy of the proposed finite element modeling and analysis. Numerical results indicated that, as the thickness ratio of the sandwich plate is decreased, the buckling modes have more dependency to the angle of the trapezoidal shape.