Effect of Thickness Stretching on the Natural Frequencies of Laminate-Faced Sandwich Plates Using a New Layerwise Model

Abstract

The current work investigates the effect of thickness stretching on the natural frequencies of laminate-faced sandwich plates using new layerwise finite element model. The proposed model assumes higher-order displacement field for the core and first-order displacement field for the face sheets. Thanks for enforcing the continuity of the interlaminar displacement, the number of variables is independent of the number of layers. The consistent mass matrix and the element stiffness matrix are derived using the Hamilton’s principle. The performance and reliability of the proposed formulation are demonstrated by comparing the author’s results with those obtained using the three-dimensional elasticity theory, analytical solutions and other advanced finite element models.

Keywords

• layerwise
• finite element
• sandwich plates
• free vibration