Open Access

ARTICLE

Three-dimensional Finite Element Buckling Analysis of Honeycomb Sandwich Composite Shells with Cutouts

J. Li, Z. H. Xiang, M. D. Xue¹

1 Corresponding author. Department of Engineering Mechanics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, P. R. China Tel.: +86-10-62772902; fax: +86-10-62781824; E-mail address: xuemd@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn

Computers, Materials & Continua 2005, 2(2), 139-150. https://doi.org/10.3970/cmc.2005.002.139

Abstract

This paper investigates the buckling response of honeycomb sandwich composite shells with cutouts under axial compression. The Wilson's incompatible solid Finite Element (FE) is used around cutouts to obtain the detail stress distribution there. While to reduce the computational expense, a special multilayered relative degrees-of-freedom (DOF) shell FE is used to model the regions far from the cutouts. The efficiency and accuracy of this modeling scheme are illustrated by two benchmarks. Then parametric studies are carried out to reveal how the buckling response is influenced by the area, the shape and the orientation of cutouts.

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Keywords

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