Buckling and Postbuckling of Prestressed Sandwich Arches

Abstract

A nonlinear finite element model is developed to investigate the stability behavior of a novel type of structure, namely prestressed sandwich arch. A prestressed sandwich arch is formed by buckling its individual layers into an arch shape and assembling them as a sandwich composite. A corotational formulation of a two‐node, three‐layer sandwich beam element is adopted. Isotropic material properties are assumed, and shear deformations of the core and facings are both included. The discontinuity in shear strains at the layer interface is accounted for by introducing a shear warpage angle. A bilinear constitutive law is used that assumes a linear strain‐hardening behavior, once the elastic limit is reached for the corresponding layer. The effects of torsional warping, transverse normal deformations, and local modes of failure are excluded. Postbuckling analysis is performed by using the augmentation technique. The model has been tested for the classical problem of clamped‐hinged sandwich column. Numerical analyses show relatively high load‐carrying capacities for sandwich arches.