VIBRATION MODELING OF SANDWICH STRUCTURES USING SOLID-SHELL FINITE ELEMENTS

The aim of this work is to propose a new finite element modeling for vibration of sandwich structures with soft core. Indeed, several approaches have been adopted in the literature to accurately model these types of structures, but show some limitations in certain configurations of high contrast of material properties or geometric aspect ratios between the different layers. In these 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 followed by considering the linear hexahedral solid-shell element previously developed by Abed-Meraim and Combescure [1]. This element is implemented into the commercial software ABAQUS via a User Element (UEL) subroutine. Numerical tests on various cantilever sandwich beams are performed to show the efficiency of this approach.