Buckling analysis of sandwich beam rested on elastic foundation and subjected to varying axial in-plane loads

The current paper illustrates the effect of in-plane varying compressive force on critical buckling loads and buckling modes of sandwich composite laminated beam rested on elastic foundation. To generalize a proposed model, unified higher order shear deformation beam theories are exploited through analysis; those satisfy the parabolic variation of shear across the thickness. Therefore, there is no need for shear correction factor. Winkler and Pastemak elastic foundations are presented to consider the effect of any elastic medium surrounding beam structure. The Hamilton's principle is proposed to derive the equilibrium equations of unified sandwich composite laminated beams. Differential quadrature numerical method (DQNM) is used to discretize the differential equilibrium equations in spatial direction. After that, eigenvalue problem is solved to obtain the buckling loads and associated mode shapes. The proposed model is validated with previous published works and good matching is observed. The numerical results are carried out to show effects of axial load functions, lamination thicknesses, orthotropy and elastic foundation constants on the buckling loads and mode shapes of sandwich composite beam. This model is important in designing of aircrafts and ships when non-uniform compressive load and shear loading is dominated.