AXIAL DECAY OF STRESSES IN A LAYERED COMPOSITE WITH SLIPPING INTERFACES

The axial diffusion of self-equilibrated end loads in sandwich strip c omposites composed of two dissimilar isotropic elastic materials with imperfect interfaces, is investigated in the context of the plane prob lem. An Airy stress function approach is utilized to obtain the charac teristic equation where the non-zero roots correspond to the decay rat es. The dominant exponential decay rate, which corresponds to the smal lest positive real part of the roots, is presented in a convenient for m for all combinations of materials and volume fractions. For the case of symmetric deformation of a sandwich strip with a relatively soft i nner core, the decay rates are much slower for all volume fractions wh en compared to a strip with a relatively rigid inner core. The analysi s also shows that decay rates for a composite strip with arbitrary end loadings are governed by the symmetric case.