Equivalent approach on elastic and thermal properties of corrugated-cored sandwich panel based on finite element analysis

The finite element analysis is applied by exerting displacement constraints on the representative volume element, in order to simulate linear independent component of the bending strain and to the extract internal bending force. The stiffness matrix is computed according to the constitutive relation of the internal forces and the strain. Finally, considering the temperature effect on the elastic constants, the macroscopic equivalent elastic constants are obtained according to the temperature. Meanwhile, the finite element analysis method has been adopted for equivalent on the thermal expansion coefficient of the sandwich plate at different temperatures. The bending responses of the model with and without equivalent are compared at different temperatures; the results show that the error is within 4%, which demonstrates the validity of this method.