Effects of anisotropy and multiaxial loading on the wrinkling of sandwich panels

The works that have been already published on sandwich face wrinkling consider isotropic or almost isotropic sandwich configurations. Hence, only the critical wrinkling load needs to be evaluated in the principal compressive stress direction. This is insufficient for a sandwich panel with a higher degree of anisotropy. This paper presents a method for estimating the wrinkling behavior of highly anisotropic sandwich panels under biaxial loading. The method is based on the assumption that wrinkling occurs at the angle where the ratio of applied load to sustainable wrinkling loads reaches a global maximum. In addition to the description of the analytical theories, the paper presents comparisons with finite element calculations and testing of real sandwich configurations. The results indicate that the derived model works excellently both for uni- and biaxial loadings, though a small factor of safety is required as with all other standard wrinkling theories.