Optimal Response Prediction of Composite Honeycomb Sandwich Plate: Theoretical and Experimental Verification

Abstract

This study reports the optimal frequencies and damping factor of the honeycomb sandwich composite plates. The sandwich panel face sheets have been considered as layered composite and honeycomb core. The higher-order shear deformation theory has been adopted to formulate the structural model and solve the governing equations of motion of sandwich structures to compute the frequencies. An optimal layout of the honeycomb composite laminated sandwich structure is being utilized to improvise both the fundamental natural frequencies and damping factors using a teaching–learning-centered artificial bee colony (TLABC). An experimental investigation is performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the current TLABC algorithm to identify the optimal values by comparing them with numerically obtained results. Additionally, for the optimal layer sequences and the fiber orientations of the composite laminated plates, several optimization problems are developed with the objective functions of frequency maximization and modal damping factors (MDF). The TLABC algorithm integrated with finite element method has been utilized to evaluate the said responses. Hence, it is concluded that the efficient design layout of a honeycomb sandwich composite plate configurations would provide the guidelines for the designer to control the vibration effectively.