On modeling of global and local response of sandwich plates with laminated faces

The present paper investigates the influence of some non-classical effects (shear deformability of faces, warping of the cross section, static continuity requirements at the interfaces) on global response (thickness-wise distributions of the bending and transverse shear stresses) of sandwich plates with laminated faces. Parametric studies are performed for different values of the face to core thickness ratio and of the face to core transverse shear flexibility ratio by using smeared laminate models and discrete-layer models, small and large deflection theories. Also investigated is the effect of the unsymmetry of faces or of the sandwich plates as a whole. The numerical results show that (1) the fulfillment of the static continuity conditions is very important, especially for sandwich type construction having stiff faces and soft core, (2) when large deflections and unsymmetric sandwich constructions are involved, also the refined higher-order models fail to give correct prediction of the thickness-wise distributions of the transverse shear stress.