Global bending response of composite sandwich plates with corrugated core. Part II: Effect of laminate construction

Global bending response of simply supported composite sandwich plates with corrugated core was studied using carbon fiber reinforced epoxy laminates in both face plates and inclined webs in the corrugated core. Two different laminate constructions were considered, namely [0/α]S and [±α]S and the fiber orientation angle was varied from 0° to 90°. Sandwich plate geometric parameters, such as face thickness, pitch and face center distance were maintained constant, but the web inclination was varied from a triangular configuration to a square configuration. The web thickness was varied with web inclination angle so that the sandwich plates had the same cross-sectional area and, therefore the same mass. This allowed a direct comparison between different laminate constructions for each web inclination angle. It was shown that for the same mass, the maximum deflection under a distributed load depends on both the web inclination angle and the laminate construction. It is significantly higher with the [±α]S construction than with the [0/α]S construction. For both laminate constructions, the largest maximum deflection occurs at a web inclination angle of 48°, which can be attributed to the combined effect of the transverse shear stiffness components.