The buckling of truncated conical sandwich panels under axial compression and external pressure

Abstract

Based on a new improved higher-order sandwich panel theory, the buckling analysis of a truncated conical composite sandwich panel with simply supported and fully clamped boundary conditions was performed for the first time. This panel was subjected to axial compression and external pressures. The governing equations were derived by using the principle of minimum potential energy. The first-order shear deformation theory was used for the composite face sheets, and for the core, a polynomial description of the displacement fields was assumed. Geometry was used for the consideration of different radii curvatures of the face sheets and the core was unique. The effects of types of boundary conditions, conical angles, length to smaller radius of core ratio, core to panel thickness ratio, and smaller radius of core to panel thickness ratio on the buckling response of truncated conical composite sandwich panels were also studied. The results were validated by the results published in the literature and the presented FE results were obtained by ABAQUS software.