Finite Element Free Vibration Analysis of Soft-Core Sandwich Beams

A study was conducted to present an alternative derivation of the quasi-two-dimensional formulation and to demonstrate its applicability to systems with laminated face sheets. The transverse deformation of the core was described using the components at the face-core interfaces and the component at the midline. The axial deformation components at the face-core interfaces were employed along with the components located at one-third of the core thickness away from the midline to represent the core axial deformation. The performance of the proposed kinematics was investigated by comparing the obtained simulation results with those in the literature and with those obtained using the ANSYS commercial finite element code.