THEORETICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF LOCAL BENDING EFFECTS IN SANDWICH PLATES

This paper presents the results of a combined theoretical and experime ntal investigation of local bending effects in a clamped circular foam -cored sandwich plate subjected to a central point load. The theoretic al investigation was conducted using an approximate method of local be nding analysis, where the basic approach is to consider the deflection of the loaded face as being governed by a two-parameter elastic found ation model, which takes into account the existence of shearing intera ction effects between the loaded face and the core material. The exper imental investigation was conducted using a holographic interferometry technique, from which detailed information about the displacement fie ld of the loaded face was obtained. Comparison between the theoretical and experimental displacement fields revealed a very convincing agree ment, thus showing that the simple elastic foundation approach provide s a good description of the local bending phenomenon.