STRAIN ENERGY BASED HOMOGENIZATION METHOD TO FIND THE EQUIVALENT ORTHOTROPIC PROPERTIES OF SANDWICH STRUCTURES

The purpose of present study is to present a methodology to determine the effective elastic properties of sandwich structures. This methodology is based on strain energy based criteria. Sandwich structures contain core material and face sheet. Earlier work in this domain contains the homogenization of core material and determining its equivalent orthotropic properties. The equivalent properties for core material then modeled along with face sheet for final analysis. In the present study however a direct scheme is proposed. Here core material and face sheet are modeled together to determine the equivalent orthotropic properties of sandwich structure.