A SIMPLIFIED METHOD FOR ULTIMATE LOAD PREDICTION OF ALL-STEEL SANDWICH PANELS

This paper is concerned with the ultimate load prediction of a sandwich panel manufactured from a steel plate assembly. The panel essentially consists of two facing plates, spot welded onto a corrugated steel core. All the plates of a panel have identical thicknesses. Three groups of panels with varying plate thicknesses were examined. The typical panel considered in this study had plan dimensions of 2.1 m x 1.0 m with a core consisting of top-hat stiffeners of depth 60 mm, placed side by side. The panel was simply supported across its y-direction boundaries and subjected to uniform lateral loading over its entire surface. The plastic hinge theory is used to evaluate the ultimate collapse load of the panel. In this respect, two approaches are compared: one based on full-section properties and the other based on the effective width concept. It is shown that the effective section gives more reliable collapse-load predictions than the full section. Theoretical collapse-load predictions agree very well with the experimental collapse load for a series of 13 panels. To accentuate the salient features of the technique, a numerical example is presented.