A theoretical analysis of the dynamic response of metallic sandwich beam under impulsive loading

The objective of this paper is to analytically study the dynamic response of a fully clamped metallic sandwich beam under impulsive loading. The membrane factor method is employed to derive the solutions for large deflections and time responses of the sandwich beam, in which the interaction of bending and stretching is considered. Moreover, tighter 'bounds' of the solutions are obtained. It is shown that the present solutions are in good agreements with the previous finite element results and lie in the bounds of the solutions. It is clear that core strength and membrane force induced by large deflections have significant effects on the dynamic response of sandwich beam with increasing the transient deflections. The present method is efficient and simple for the dynamic response analysis of large deflections of metallic sandwich structures. (C) 2009 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.