Static Response of Stiff-Cored Unsymmetric Sandwich Beams

Improved equations governing the deflection of an unsymmetric sandwich beam (which include the effect of extensional and bending rigidities of its stiff core) are derived using a variational method. The effect of face-thickness ratio on the contribution of the core to the overall flexural rigidity is studied. Numerical results for simply supported and fixed-fixed beams subjected to a uniformly distributed load are obtained by using Laplace transforms. These results show that ignoring the bending and extensional effects of a stiff core can cause errors in maximum deflections as high as 20 percent. The corresponding errors in stresses are very high, and they vary from 10 to 150 percent. Hence, it is suggested that the extensional and bending effects of the core should be taken into account when one is interested in calculating the maximum stresses in stiff-cored beams.