Linear statics and free vibration sensitivity analysis of the composite sandwich plates based on a layerwise/solid-element method

In the numerical examples, two kinds of sensitivity analysis schemes, the overall finite difference method (OFD) and the semi-analytical method (SAM), are employed to calculate the sensitivity coefficients of displacements, stresses and natural frequencies. The convergence is studied together with the effect of step size on the relative error. The performance of these three methods of modeling the honeycomb in computing displacements and natural frequencies sensitivity coefficients is investigated. At last, the influences of the parameters on the displacements, stresses and natural frequencies are investigated by using the sensitivity analysis scheme based on the local model and SAM.