Bending and vibration of multilayer sandwich beams and plates

Abstract

A finite element displacement analysis of multilayer sandwich beams and plates, each with n stiff layers and n minus 1 weak cores, is presented. Each layer of the sandwich structure may have individual orthotropic properties of its own and the bending rigidities of the stiff layers are taken into account while direct stresses in cores are neglected in the analysis. The condition of common shear angle for all cores, which has been used by several authors, is not implied in the formulation. The free vibration problems of multilayer sandwich structures have also been solved, and good accuracy is demonstrated.