Holographic interferometry assessment of stress distribution in sandwich beams in bending

It is well known that there is a lack of experimental results on the thickn ess distributions of the displacements, strains and stresses in sandwich be ams in bending. The present work aims to fill partially this lacuna through an experimental investigation. Use is made of a technique based on hologra phic interferometry. Some experimental results quantifying the thickness di stributions of the displacements are presented and the limitations of the a dopted technique are discussed. The investigation also highlights some inte resting effect of the core deformability, which are essential in understand ing the failure phenomena of sandwich structures subjected to concentrated loads. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.