An equivalent plate model for corrugated-core sandwich panels

This paper suggests an equivalent plate model to analyze the mechanical behavior of corrugated-core sandwich panels under tensile and bending loads. A homogenization-based theory based on the equivalent energy method is used to obtain the stiffness matrices of corrugated cores of a sandwich panel. Equivalent continuum layers with orthotropic elastic constants corresponding to the membrane and bending stiffness terms of the corrugated layers are determined by using classical lamination theory (CLT). The importance of this work is that an equivalent plate model for corrugated-core sandwich panels can be easily obtained by combining the equivalent energy method and the CLT. The proposed equivalent model is verified by numerical simulations of sandwich panels with sinusoidal and trapezoidal corrugated cores.