Overall behaviour of singly curved shallow sandwich panels: the case of general boundary conditions

The overall behaviour of the shallow sandwich panel with an arbitrary initi al profile and general boundary conditions under an arbitrary load is discu ssed. The structural parameters of the panel that allow one to generalize d escription of the overall behaviour of the panel are introduced. The mathem atical model based on the Reissner-Mindlin plate theory is developed, and t he set of governing equations is derived. The implicit nonlinear and explic it linear solutions are obtained for the uniformly loaded panel with unifor m curvature and similar boundary restraints. An analysis of the global stab ility is performed for panels that have general configurations. Three stabi lity modes, namely stable deformation, symmetric and asymmetric snap-throug hs are found possible. The influence of the structural parameters of the; p anel on its global behaviour is studied. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.