Dynamic response of soft core sandwich beams with metal-graphene nanocomposite skins

Abstract

Sandwich structures are able to provide enhanced strength, stiffness, and lightweight characteristics, thus contributing to an improved overall structural response. To this sandwich configuration one may associate through-thickness graded core material properties and homogeneous or graded properties nanocomposite skins. These tailor-made possibilities may provide alternative design solutions to specific problem requisites. This work aims to address these possibilities, considering to this purpose a package of three beam layerwise models based on different shear deformation theories, implemented through Kriging-based finite elements. The viscoelastic behaviour of the sandwich core is modelled using the complex method and the dynamic problem is solved in the frequency domain. A set of case studies illustrates the performance of the models.