FURTHER ANALYSIS OF END EFFECTS FOR PLANE DEFORMATIONS OF SANDWICH STRIPS

Saint-Venant end effects for plane deformations of sandwich strips are investigated. For two phase composite strips, with homogeneous isotro pic layers that are subjected to self-equilibrated end loads, the expo nential decay of end effects is characterized in terms of eigenvalues analogous to the Fadle-Papkovich eigenvalues for the homogeneous strip . An earlier study of this problem was carried out by Choi and Horgan (1978, Saint-Venant end effects for plane deformation of sandwich stri ps. Int. J. Solids Structures 14, 187-195). Here we simplify and exten d this analysis by using the results of Dundurs on reduced dependence on the elastic constants. The decay rate is shown to depend quadratica lly on the two Dundurs' constants alpha,beta. Numerical results yield graphs for the decay rate in the alpha,beta parallelogram, which are i mmediately applicable for design purposes. For any combination of mate rials in the two-phase sandwich strip, these plots allow one to determ ine the Saint-Venant decay length. For the case of a relatively compli ant inner core, an asymptotic result shows that the characteristic dec ay length is much larger than that for a homogeneous isotropic strip. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.