Analytical homogenization for in-plane shear, torsion and transverse shear of honeycomb core with skin and thickness effects

The homogenization of the honeycomb sandwich core enables to obtain an equivalent homogeneous solid and its elastic moduli thus to make numerical modeling very efficient. In the present paper, the in-plane shear, torsion, in plane-shear coupled with torsion and transverse shear are studied with skin effect: the honeycomb core's deformation is constrained by two fairly rigid skins, so the core's stiffness is largely increased. An analytic homogenization method, using trigonometric function series is proposed to study the influence of the honeycomb thickness on the elastic properties, and the upper and lower bounds of their equivalent elastic moduli can be given directly by the analytical homogenization models (H-models). A very good agreement has been achieved between numerical results issued from the H-models and 3D FE modeling.