Modeling of viscoelastic sandwich beams using solid-shell finite elements

The aim of this work is to propose vibration modeling of sandwich structures with soft core using solid shell finite elements. Several approaches have been adopted in the literature to accurately model this type of structures; however, they show some limitations in certain configurations of high contrast of material properties or geometric aspect ratios between the different layers. In such situations, it is generally well-known that the use of higher-order or three-dimensional finite elements is more appropriate, but will generate a large number of degrees of freedom and, thereby, large CPU times. In this work, an alternative method is proposed by considering a recently developed linear hexahedral solid shell element. This solid shell element is implemented into Matlab in order to use the so-called solver Diamant, which couples Asymptotic Numerical Method (ANM) and Automatic Differentiation (AD). Numerical tests, including various cantilever sandwich beams as well as a simplified pattern of rail on sleepers, are performed to show the efficiency of the proposed approach. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.