Overall and local buckling of sandwich plates with laminated faceplates. I: Analysis. II: Applications (Q5947178)

Face sheets deform as Mindlin or Kirchhoff plates whereas the core is modelled as a continuous three-dimensional solid. That leads to 12 and 8 fundamental quantities, respectively. For a single strip of rectangular or prismatic plate, these fundamental quantities are approximated by B-splines in strip direction, and by up to quintic polynomials in the orthogonal direction. Stiffness matrix and geometric stiffness matrix are set up. Adjacent strips are coupled by eliminating internal degrees of freedom. Finally, the whole plate forms one superstrip. The authors use an extended Sturm sequence-bisection approach to determine the eigenvalues specifying the bifurcation buckling. A number of different applications show how the convergence behaviour depends on the mode shape. Furthermore, the buckling performance of plates with CFRP faces is compared against those with aluminium alloy sheets.