Modeling of viscoelastic sandwich beams using solid-shell finite elements

The aim of this work is to propose vibration modeling of sandwich structures with soft core using solid-shell finite elements. Several approaches have been adopted in the literature to accurately model this type of structures; however, they show some limitations in certain configurations of high contrast of material properties or geometric aspect ratios between the different layers. In such situations, it is generally well-known that the use of higher-order or three-dimensional finite elements is more appropriate, but will generate a large number of degrees of freedom and, thereby, large CPU times. In this work, an alternative method is proposed by considering a recently developed linear hexahedral solid-shell element. This solid-shell element is implemented into Matlab in order to use the so-called solver Diamant, which couples Asymptotic Numerical Method (ANM) and Automatic Differentiation (AD). Numerical tests, including various cantilever sandwich beams as well as a simplified pattern of rail on sleepers, are performed to show the efficiency of the proposed approach.