Flexural analysis of sandwich FDM rectangular plates with and without gaps

In this thesis, the static behavior of multilayered sandwich plates composed of functionally graded (FG) materials is investigated using the finite element method (FEM). The main objective of the study is to examine the effects of different material distributions, layer combinations, and boundary conditions on the deformation and stress responses of the plates. The analysis is carried out using ANSYS software, and SHELL281 element are employed due to their high accuracy in modeling bending and shear effects. The plate models feature a 40×40 mesh structure and consist of 80 distinct material layers. Seven different models were developed and analyzed under various boundary conditions (such as CCCC, CFCF, CCCF, and SSSS). The sandwich plates consist of functionally graded face sheets made of a metal–ceramic mixture and an isotropic homogeneous core. The material properties vary continuously through the thickness of the plate according to a power-law distribution. Each model is subjected to static loading conditions, including both point loads and uniformly distributed loads. The analysis results reveal that boundary conditions, the material distribution exponent (p-value), the layer configuration, and the plate thickness significantly influence deformation and stress behavior. Notably, the CCCC boundary condition yields the lowest deflection and the highest stress values. It is also observed that an increase in the p-value leads to a decrease in deflection but an increase in the second principal stress. The findings of this thesis offer valuable insights for the design of FG sandwich plates in advanced structural analysis and contribute to material and structural optimization in high-precision fields such as aerospace, aviation, and biomedical engineering. The most prominent result is that increasing the number of layers significantly enhances the stiffness of the structure and leads to a more balanced stress distribution.