Stress Analysis of Sandwich Plates With Unidirectional Thickness Variation

Abstract

A small deflection theory is presented for the stresses and deformations in variable thickness elastic sandwich plates that are symmetric about a middle surface. In this analysis the face sheets are treated as membranes; the core is assumed to be inextensible in the thickness direction, to carry only transverse shear stress on its cross sections normal to middle surface, and to be deformable in transverse shear. The theory takes into account the contribution of the face sheet membrane forces (by virtue of their slopes) to the transverse shear.