Local effects at core junctions of sandwich structures under different types of loads

The paper concerns local effects that occur in the vicinity of junctions between different cores in sandwich structures subjected to axial and transverse forces and bending moments. These local effects display themselves in a rise of locally induced bending normal stresses in the faces of the sandwich near the core junctions and in an appearance of shear and normal stress concentrations in the cores adjacent to the junction.The nature and intensity of the local effects is studied for three representative study cases, which portray some typical sandwich beam compositions widely found in industrial applications. The numerical simulations performed using Finite Element Analysis reveals significant rates of stress concentrations at the core junctions not only under a transverse loading, but also at the core junctions subjected to bending and tension/compression. Possible design alterations of the core junctions aimed to suppress the unwanted local effects are discussed.